


The Witch and the Guardian

by ItsaVikingThing



Category: Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: A wee bit of a slow burn on the Deanoru front, Action, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, F/F, Humour, I got there, It's been a while since I said I'm still working on it but I'm getting there!, It's been a while since I updated but I'm still working on it, Magic, Romance, Stuff, but they'll get there, things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2020-02-27 10:56:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 60,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18737617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ItsaVikingThing/pseuds/ItsaVikingThing
Summary: Ten years ago the Minoru family died at the gates of the Shining City, killed by its Guardian, Jonah. Only the eight-year-old Nico survived, fleeing into the depths of the Old Forest, a place devoid of human life and home to monsters and black magic.For ten years, Nico learns the ways of the woods and plots her vengeance on the Guardian who killed her family and the city that shuns her. But when she helps a group of young nobles from the Shining City, Nico meets a young woman called Karolina and forges a bond that will make her question what is stronger: her need for revenge or her desire for a new life.





	1. The Witch of the Woods

It’s been ten years since the day at the Radiant Gate.

Ten years, and every night has brought Nico the same nightmare. The Guardian of the Shining City towers over her, his body pulsing with glaring white light, his eyes cold and grey as he stares at Nico. He steps over the lifeless body of Nico’s older sister and kneels in front of her.

"Oh, child. What a mess." His voice is smooth, calm, too cold to be truly friendly. “It’s my job to protect the Shining City from monsters, do you understand? Your mother was no ordinary witch, child. She’d studied black magic. In so doing, she brought a darkness into your family, and your family tried to bring that darkness into the city.” He smiles, his teeth almost blinding in their radiance. “Into _my_ city. I couldn’t allow that, now could I?”

When she was a child, Nico was too numb to feel the splinter of wood in her cheek, to know that her blood mingled with her tears as she lay on the road, sobbing. Nico knows now that a piece of her mother's magic staff embedded itself in her flesh when the Guardian shattered it.

Moments before he shattered Nico's mother’s bones.

On that day, Nico couldn’t form words through her tears. In her dreams she asks, “Where will I go?”

“Go anywhere you like!” The Guardian spreads his glowing hands. “The town of Liber is a week’s walk from here, if you follow the road. Does that sound like it will take too long? Hmm, with your little legs, it could take even longer. You could cut through the Old Forest, of course. Though...not many people who try that come back out again. But really, you can go anywhere. Anywhere but here, child. The greatest city in the world is forever closed to you.”

“ _Why_? Why let me go and not them?"

“I gave your parents a choice. They chose to ignore my warning. Your sister…” He shrugs. “She was a victim of circumstance. You? I sense that you’ve been tarnished by your mother’s magic. The darkness inside you can only grow, and I will suffer no darkness in my city. But...I don’t much feel like killing an entire family in a single morning.” He grins. “So you get to live! Isn’t that wonderful? Off you go, now! Go make a life for yourself. Shoo!"

Nico turns away from the light of his city, from the stark white light of him, and looks to where he points. She looks to the gnarled branches and black trees of the Old Forest. She looks back at him.

“The morning is almost over. I doubt my qualms about ending you will last past noon. If I ever see you again, child...well.” He is no longer smiling. He's so bright it hurts to look at him. “Go.”

Nico crawls away, her palms and her knees registering the change from warm, smooth stone to cold, grey grass. Nico crawls into the darkness of the Old Forest, watering the roots of its trees with her tears and her blood.

When she feels safe in the darkness that drapes over her like a shroud, she looks back to the smear of light that is the Guardian and whispers, “You _will_ see me again. I’ll be the last thing you see.”

That’s where her dream always ends.

That’s where Nico’s life truly began.

* * *

Nico always wakes up cold.

She wakes up in familiar darkness, the air thick and heavy inside the stone vault she currently calls her bedroom. It smells like age and dust, accented with the lingering aroma of burnt pine. Every night she lights a fire in her makeshift fireplace beneath a crack in the roof that serves as a chimney. Every night she hopes to drive some of the chill from the walls of her sleeping space, with little success. And every night, her fire dies before morning. The Old Forest doesn’t much like fire. It takes an act of will to keep any flame burning this deep in the woods. 

It takes an act of will for Nico to get out of bed every morning, even if her bed is nothing more than furs on a cold stone floor. It isn't comfortable, but that's okay. Nico doesn't really remember what sleeping on a comfortable bed feels like. She supposes that she wouldn't wake up cold and stiff and sore every day, if she had a real bed to sleep in. But if she wants a real bed, that would mean leaving the Old Forest. That would mean not living within a day’s journey of the Shining City. That would mean pretending not to be a creature of darkness for the sake of living among people she mostly despises. It would mean missing her chance to meet the Guardian for the second time. The last time.

Seeking a real bed would mean _giving up_. Nico Minoru will not give up.

She does _get_ up, eventually. Nico lies in bed until the emptiness in her belly convinces her to get up. Nico reaches out and grabs her staff. She stands up and says, "Open."

With a grinding rumble, the boulder she uses to seal herself in at night rolls away from the entrance to the vault. It's debatable if what makes it through the forest canopy can still be called sunlight, but after the near total darkness of her room, Nico has to squint for a moment while her eyes adjust. She keeps a tight grip on her staff. A few months back, a wyvern the size of a horse had tried to attack her when she walked outside before she'd fully recovered her sight. It hadn't been a good start to her day, though Nico had at least eaten well that week.

Nothing jumps out at her this morning when she steps out into the forest. Nico's home for the last year or so has been this small clearing full of ruins that belonged to some long ruined city. Not much stonework survives above ground level, but there are enough pieces of masonry for her to sit on or shelter behind when the wind rises.

Or something tries to eat her.

Nico's cooking pit has survived the night intact, which means she doesn't need to build it from the dwindling stack of firewood she keeps in the vault. With a flick of her staff she sets the waiting kindling ablaze. She's feeling lazy enough to plant her staff in the grey earth and say, "Kettle," using her magic to summon the old iron pot to her rather than fetching it out of the vault. It sails through the air towards her, the handle dropping into her outstretched hand.

Saying 'bag' does nothing, at first. Nico scowls at her staff. “Seriously? This again? I’m getting enough exercise! I stalked and killed a manticore three days ago! I just don’t want to waste time fumbling in the dark, okay? _Bag_!”

This time, the hide sack that constitutes her larder floats through the air and lands gently at her feet. Digging through it is thoroughly depressing. She's able to scrape together a handful of berries, a few strips of dried meat and a handful of tea leaves scraped from the bottom of the bag.

"Shit," she mutters, staring at the withered leaves. Finding a half-empty box of tea on a luckless idiot who thought they could take a shortcut through the Old Forest had been the highlight of Nico's month. Tea in the morning and tea in the evening has become a pleasant ritual. Maybe it’s good that she’s run out, maybe she was becoming too dependent on it. "But I need to go hunting anyway. And maybe I'll get lucky if I check near the edge of the forest. Maybe I should scry for a caravan and see if I can steal some supplies. Or maybe I should just..."

She trails off, frowning. It's been a long time since she has let herself get close to the Shining City. It's been about a year, in fact. Not since the last time the Guardian fought someone. Nico’s dreams have kept the memories of the day the Guardian killed her family fresh in her mind. But, she had only been a child then, with little understanding of magic or of battle. Nico had thought that her mother had been a threat to the Guardian, that theirs had been a close fought duel.

She had been wrong.

A year ago, Nico had been a few hours walk from the Shining City, reading a tree, when the magic had started. Magic so intense, so powerful, that she felt it even at that distance. Curiosity had made her climb to find a vantage point. She hadn’t been able to see the battle, but she had seen the light that the Guardian had summoned. The glowing, shifting lights of the Guardian's power had punctured even the gloom of the Old Forest, making grey boughs brown, grey leaves green.

The amount of magic expended over the next few hours had made the hairs on Nico's arms stand up, had filled her mouth with the taste of copper, had set her heart to hammering, had made her hands so sweaty she would have fallen out of the tree if it hadn’t kept a careful grip on her. When it was over, the glowing lights of the Guardian flashing in triumph as the power of their opponent finally ebbed, Nico had half-climbed, half-fallen from the tree. She had known that the Guardian was powerful, that he drew from the magic of the Shining City and when he fought there his power was at its greatest. She just hadn’t known how powerful he truly was.

Nico hadn't run away. Not at all. She'd just...decided to explore other parts of the forest for a while. After all, the forest was large and even in ten years Nico hadn’t seen more than a third of it. It made sense to move further from the Shining City for a while. And since she'd found the vault, it had made sense to set up her home there. It hasn’t made sense to go anywhere near the Shining City and its Guardian since then.

It isn’t because she’s scared. It isn’t because, after a decade of preparation, witnessing the Guardian’s last duel showed her how utterly inadequate Nico truly was. No, it’s not that _at all_.

Nico knows she isn’t the witch her mother was. Her mother’s staff was crafted specifically for her by the finest practitioners of the magical arts to be found anywhere outside the Shining City. It was an instrument perfectly designed to focus and amplify Tina Minoru's will. Nico built hers around the splinter of her mother's that she dug from her cheek, using any pieces of wood the Old Forest would spare her in the first months she spent there. Tina Minoru was the latest in a long line of witches, trained in the deepest subtleties of the art. Nico’s training consists of every lesson her mother gave her older sister--Amy, Tina’s true heir--that Nico was able to spy on.

Nico's done her best to build on that shaky foundation. She’s learned a lot from her time in the Old Forest. She's learned to read the dark splotches magic from forgotten ages have left in the trunks of trees here. She's learned how to listen for the echoes of incantations and formulae long thought lost that the wind still whispers through the leaves and branches of certain groves when the moon is full. Nico has learned how to live not just in the Old Forest, but with it. She’s made allies of the root systems of the younger trees, formed a truce with and earned favours from the older trees, and knows how to keep away from the oldest of them altogether. And Nico has learned how to be still and quiet, how to hide even her scent from predators, and she's learned how to be swift, how to be deadly, how to survive using her wits, her body, her magic.

But every tiny scrap of knowledge, every lesson gleaned through bitter struggle, all the years of planning amount to so little compared to the raw power of the Guardian. Nico always knew that she would have to lure him out of the city but for the last year she's been chewing over the fact that if she can't lure him into the Old Forest itself, she doesn't stand a chance. Never mind the guards of the Radiant Legion, never mind the defensive spells buried deep in the masonry of the walls and buildings of the Shining City, never mind the witches and wizards and the martially trained nobles, the simple truth is, Nico alone is no match for the power she felt a year ago.

She'd need another ten years, or twenty, if she hopes to be ready for the fight she vowed she’d finish.

"You might never be ready, weakling," she whispers to herself, her hand gripping her staff painfully tight. "So if you'll never be ready, you're as ready as you'll ever be. And you know the foraging is always better near the Shining City. You won’t need to waste time and energy scrying, you _know_ there'll be caravans you could raid for supplies almost every day. If you want tea, you know where you have to go, idiot. If you want revenge, _coward_ , you know what you have to do."

With a growl she hurls the last tea leaves aside, scrubbing her hand on her thigh to rid herself of any clinging fragments. She stuffs a handful of meat and berries into her mouth, chewing and swallowing them down as swiftly as she can. She strides away from the cooking pit, in the direction of the stream, summoning her travel bag with a twitch of her staff.

Anger makes her want to set out right away, but there are things that can't be rushed when it comes to travelling through the Old Forest. So Nico cools her rage bathing in the stream, before she anoints herself with manticore venom and gets dressed. With her staff in her hand, her bag on her shoulder, and anger keeping the fear out of her heart, Nico begins walking West, towards the Shining City.

* * *

That afternoon, Nico is close to one of her old camping sites when she hears voices.

The Old Forest has a reputation that keeps most people from exploring it, but there are always those bold, foolish or desperate enough to risk the dangers. Over the last decade, Nico has spied on woodcutters and charcoal burners at the fringes of the forest, traded furs for cloth with a merchant greedy enough to entertain a strange girl who came from the shelter of the trees, whispered directions from the treetops to a baker’s apprentice who had been sent to forage for mushrooms and had gotten lost in a very bad grove, driven off bandits who thought they could make her home theirs, killed all but one of the bounty hunters who thought to claim the gold the Council of the Shining City offered for her head and, once...Nico played with a princess.

Or at least, at the time Nico thought that the girl she met must have been a princess. Back then, Nico was thirteen and everything she knew about people and society was what she’d been able to cobble together from three sources. Her hazy memories of life before the Old Forest, her scrying sessions that had afforded her glimpses of the villages, towns and castles beyond the borders of the Old Forest--all but the Shining City itself, whose walls protected it from every kind of invasive magic--and the stories that her father used to tell her when her mother was too busy training Amy to deal with Nico. 

In her father’s stories, princesses were always tall and beautiful and kind and wise. Even as a small child, Nico had resented them. Amy was taller than Nico, and it wasn’t just down to her being older. Their mother had pointed out several times that Nico was small for her age. Amy always kept her clothes and her hands clean while Nico would make a mess within minutes of putting on a new dress. Amy could be shown something once and get it right the first time she tried it, but Nico has always been slow and clumsy. So Nico really didn’t much like princesses, because if anyone was a princess, it was Amy, not her.

Then Nico met a girl who was just like every princess in her father's stories, only Nico didn't dislike her at all. She had climbed out of a white carriage one day on the trade road that connects the Shining City with the rest of the country. Her carriage had stopped because a wagon with a broken axle had blocked the road at a place where it passed close to the outer edge of the forest. Nico was the reason that the axle had broken: she had yet to become a good enough hunter to sustain herself without robbing passing waggons for additional supplies.

But rather than abandon her place of hiding high up in a tree and go about her theft, Nico had watched, mesmerised, as the girl from the white carriage had wandered to the edge of the woods, her face serene and wonderful. She had worn a white dress and had seemed to shine under the sunlight. Her long golden hair seemed _brighter_ than the sun, and when she looked up at the limbs of the trees stretched out above her, Nico had seen that the girl had eyes so blue that even the shadow she stood under couldn't make them grey. 

As Nico had stared down at the girl she _knew_ must be a princess, the girl looked up and saw Nico. She saw Nico and she didn’t scream but actually _smiled_. Her smile made her blue eyes even brighter and Nico had felt something tugging at her, even before the princess had waved, beckoning Nico to her.

And even though she'd gone there to stop a wagon and steal from it, even though she was already feared and hated as the Witch of the Woods, even though she was steeped as thoroughly in darkness as the Guardian had foretold, Nico had climbed down and whispered a 'hello' to the princess, peering at her from behind the sheltering trunk of a tree.

The memories Nico has of the half hour that followed are ones that she _likes_ to remember, so she tries to keep them carefully wrapped up in her mind. She tries not to visit them too often, afraid that if she does she'll wear them away to dust and lose one of the good things she has. Besides, the sound of voices in the Old Forest mean that Nico needs to be wary right now, so there’s really no time to think about the maybe princess. Instead, Nico shrinks her staff and slips it into the loop on her belt. She scrambles up an oak tree she knows, scowling when it’s branches shiver and its trunk sways in a lazy attempt to trip her.

“Rude!” Nico whispers. “Have you forgotten who took your acorns and planted them in the good earth beside the road to the west? Hmm? Have you forgotten how your saplings have flourished there under the sun and the light of the Shining City? I haven’t been gone from this part of the forest so long that a tree should forget it owes me a debt!”

With a creaking grumble, the tree sways and stretches its branches in the direction of the voices.

“Better,” Nico says with a sniff, then hops to the next branch.

It doesn’t take her long to find the source of the voices. It takes her a while to understand what she’s seeing, though, because it looks like four young nobles from the Shining City have decided to kill themselves. That’s something new in Nico’s experience, so she decides to shadow them from the treetops and listen for a while before letting the forest decide their fate.

Two of them are boys and two of them are girls. The tallest of the boys has pale skin and moves with the ease of one trained in combat techniques from an early age. He has a sword on his hip and a pair of gauntlets on his hands but is otherwise wearing nothing more protective than a velvet doublet and matching leggings.

A girl with shoulder-length purple hair walks beside him, and it seems to Nico that the girl can't quite decide if she wants to walk close enough to the boy with the sword that they would almost be touching or if she'd rather leave more space between. It seems, though, that she shrinks back mostly when the boy looks her way. She has a bag on her back but doesn't appear to be armed in any way. She wears a dress with a skirt short enough to be practical in the forest and a shawl embroidered with runes in silver thread. She appears to be upset with the boy she doesn't dare stay too close to for some reason. "I still don't understand why you get the sword, Chase. Or why it’s the _only_ sword we have."

"What?" Chase glares at her. "It's my sword! And this is a secret mission, so I couldn’t exactly sign more weapons out of the armoury. And I've been training with it since I was five, so I think I'll keep it. You don’t even know how to hold a sword properly. I mean, I tried to show you once, but you kept shoving me away whenever I touched you and--"

"Y-yes, but, ah, that's my point! That’s my _whole_ point!" She gestures angrily at him "Why is it that in the Shining City wizards and witches don't get swords and sword training? See, if I had a sword--"

"Do you want me to give you my sword? Is that what you really want? Because I'll give you my sword! I mean, it's not like I think witches _shouldn't_ be allowed--"

" _If I had a sword_ ," the girl snaps, her voice rising, "I would be holding it in my hands! Not in my...my pouch! I'd--"

"I think that thing's called a scabbard, Gert," the other girl points out helpfully. She's the shortest of the group, and the youngest by a couple of years. She's wearing a tunic over short trousers and has a colourful hat perched on her head. She brushes her curly black hair from her face and adds, "And you could have brought a knife, you know."

"Oh, sure, I could have brought a knife! I’m allowed a knife, for spellcraft and for cooking! But not a _sword_ , no! Because imagine the _horror_ of a witch with a sword! I mean, _I_ might think of carrying it in my hands so that I could defend us _immediately_ if a monster jumps out at us. Because this is the Old Forest! And we all know something _will_! There are the manticores whose venom drives you insane before it kills you, and then there are the wyverns who get so big they could swallow a person whole, and the wraiths who you never see until it's too late, and, oh yes! How could I forget? _The One Who Walks in Darkness_! We absolutely want to run into _her_ without a sword ready! They say she steals people's faces! I know I'm in a minority, but I _like my face_! I'd like to keep it where it is!"

“I, uh, everybody likes your face, Gert,” Chase says. He coughs. "I'm not going to let anything happen to your face. Uh, anything bad, I mean." Even from the top of her tree, Nico thinks she can feel the heat of the boy's blush. "But swords are heavy! And we've been walking for hours. If my arms are too tired to wield it properly, the sword isn't going to do us much good, is it? Besides, no one’s seen the witch in over a year--"

"Eiffel said she saw her last week," Molly says. She keeps her hands near the hem of her tunic, Nico notes. "Eiffel said she was eating a raw squirrel and that she had _fangs_. Black fangs!"

Nico rolls her eyes.

"Oh, _Eiffel_ ," Gert says, her voice thick with contempt. "What does she know about anything?"

"But--"

"Molly," the other boy suddenly says. He isn't as tall as Chase, and he doesn't move with the same unconscious grace. No he moves with sure, quiet purpose. He has a dagger tucked into his belt and a sling draped over his shoulder. He wears armour: a breastplate of silvered steel over a leather doublet and heavy leather breeches. He speaks quietly, too, but the others stop talking when he speaks. They know that when he speaks, they should listen. "What you said a minute ago...did _you_ bring a knife?"

There's a pause.

"No?" Molly ventures. “Especially not if it means I’m in trouble.”

"Molly!" Gert folds her arms and glares at the younger girl. "Are you carrying a sharp, pointy thing that could kill you if you trip up and impale yourself on it?!"

"I'm not going to fall over! But even if I did, I didn't bring a knife, Gert! Alex, I swear--"

"Pity," Alex muses. "Because we're being watched by something. And given how close together the trees are and how low to the ground the branches are, knives would be better than swords when something jumps out at us."

Nico has a bad moment where she thinks that the leader has somehow spotted her. But, no. As soon as she shifts her focus from the nobles to the forest, Nico spots it, too. The particular texture of silence that announces the approach of a predator. Her respect for the boy called Alex increases.

A branch snaps somewhere to the north. Somewhere not too distant. The nobles quickly take up positions on a bare, mostly level patch of earth back to back, facing out in different directions.

"Yeah, no, I didn't bring a knife," Molly says quickly. "I brought two, because I figured Gert wouldn't bring anything."

"Hey!" Gert protests. "I bring a fresh perspective and new ideas wherever I go. That's better than a knife in almost every circumstance!"

“Uh huh,” Chase mutters, drawing his sword. The blade is etched with silver runes which shine even in the gloom of the forest. "And what's your perspective right now?"

From not far away at all comes the slithery sound of a large, scaly body brushing against bark.

“Uh…” Gert swallows audibly. "My perspective is that I would like to never have agreed to look for ancient prismatic tablets in the Old Forest. Also, it is my perspective that I would very much like a sword, but I’ll settle for a knife. Right now, Molly!"

Alex produces a sling and loads a softly glowing white stone into it. He begins to slowly whirl the sling, generating momentum. Molly produces a pair of knives from under her tunic and passes one to Gert, who holds it in a shaking hand.

"I wish Karolina was here," Molly whispers after a minute in which the tension between the four grows ever more taut.

"She would've tried to stop us if she knew we were doing this, because she's an idiot who doesn't know how to ask for help. But...I wish she was here, too." Gert reaches behind her with her free hand and grasps Molly's. "Hey. You've got me, Molly. Always."

"I'm not going to let anything happen to you two," Chase says. He clenches one hand into a fist and the gauntlet he wears blazes with light. Light flows over his body, covering him in a transparent shield. "I promise." He pauses. "Or, ah, you, Alex."

"Thanks," Alex says dryly. "Now be quiet. We need to listen for what's out there."

They fall silent, listening and watching, their weapons ready. It makes no difference, in the end.The thing that emerges from the treeline is little more than a dark blur at first, streaking directly for Chase and colliding with him in a shower of sparks. His magical shield holds, barely, but he's hurled from his feet and his sword is flung from his hand.

Alex whirls to face the creature, loosing his sling stone in the same instant. There's nothing wrong with his reflexes or his instincts, but the thing he's fighting is far too fast and far too clever for him. It flattens itself to the forest floor, letting the sling stone pass over its long body, then springs up, pushing off of all four legs, and whips its tail across Alex's chest with enough force to slam him against a tree. He slumps down to the ground, gasping in pain, his breastplate dented.

Smoke rises from the creature's tail and it hisses in pain and in fury.

Nico's surprised when the young girl, Molly, yells and rushes the creature, bringing her knife down in an overhanded blow. She connects, too. The creature isn't badly hurt, but slamming into Chase's shield has taken something out of it and the silver in Alex's breastplate has hurt it enough to distract it. Molly's blow connects, and she hits it _hard_ , but most of the damage done is to her knife. The blade snaps near the handle, leaving Molly with no weapon and the full attention of the creature.

"No!" Gert screams. She throws herself at Molly, knocking them both to the ground. She tugs at her shawl, waving it frantically in front of the monster. The silver runes flare, emitting light with an intensity that forces Nico to shield her eyes. The effect on the creature is even more dramatic. It shrieks in pain, reeling back and slashing wildly at the air with one clawed foot. There are only two toes and two claws, rather than three, on that foot, but it doesn't make it any less dangerous. Gert looks around desperately. "Chase! Get up! You have to get up!"

Chase groans, but he seems to hear her. He climbs onto his hands and knees, casting about for his sword. Alex pushes himself upright with his back supported by the tree. He fumbles another stone out of a pouch on his belt and loads it into his sling. Gert clutches the useless knife and her glowing shawl, breathing so rapidly she’s in danger of passing out before the monster gets to her.

The thing that hunts them shakes its long, wedge-shaped head. Smoke curls from the skin around its mouth and eyes, but when it hisses it sounds more angry than hurt. It’s rough lips part, jaws widening to reveal black, needle-like teeth. The tip of its tail flicks back and forth. Its legs bunch, ready for another pounce. It's still facing Molly and Gert who slowly stand up, Molly snatching the intact knife from Gert's hand even as Gert tries to shield Molly with her body. The creature blinks, focusing intently on Gert.

Which, Nico knows, means it's almost certainly going to attack Alex. Alex, who thinks that the creature must have forgotten him, since it left him behind it, in its blind spot. Alex, who starts to whirl his sling, more focused on attacking than defending himself. Alex, who has no magic shield to protect him.

Alex, who is going to be the first of these four to die. But not the last.

It isn't her problem, of course. Why should she care that a bunch of noble brats from the Shining City are about to die? Even if they are, arguably, brave and even if they care enough about each other to risk themselves for each other. Nico can admire that, but what is it to her if their bravery gets them killed? Because they might be brave, and they might have some powerful tools with them, but Nico recognizes the forest wraith that's about to kill those idiots. Nico is the reason it only has two toes on its right foreleg, and she knows from personal experience how dangerous it is.

From scarred snout to barbed tail-tip, Two Toes is ten feet of armoured muscle and lethal instinct. Normal steel or iron are useless against a monster with as much black magic as blood in its veins. Molly’s knife never stood a chance. Spell-forged silver can hurt him, and even kill him, if it penetrates his scales and finds a vital organ. So maybe Chase’s sword could do the job, but anything short of a blow to the brain is something Chase is unlikely to survive; wraiths are stubborn in death, and all too eager to share it in their final moments. Gert might be able to stun or even blind Two Toes with her shawl, assuming it has enough power left in it. Judging from how dim the silver runes are now, Nico doubts it. Two Toes is going to kill Alex, then Chase, and Molly and Gert, too, if they aren’t sensible enough to run while Two Toes feasts. 

And it really isn’t Nico’s problem.

Only...when they parted ways last time, the wraith with one less toe, several broken teeth and a jagged wound on its snout, it was with a clear understanding that this patch of the forest was Nico's. She may not have been here in over a year, but it's still hers. Apparently, the things that live here need to be reminded of that. And if Nico’s going to deal with the wraith anyway, she may as well do it now.

Nico narrows her eyes. “Hey, trees. You all know me. You all owe me debts. I'm collecting on one now.”

She pulls her staff from her belt, then uncurls her legs from the branch she's perched on and drops herself from the tree, restoring her staff's size and gripping it in both hands. "Shield," she hisses as she drops, and energy flows from the tip of her staff, forming a black, transparent sphere around her. The base of the sphere hits the ground, cushioning her fall so that she only feels a mild jolt in her knees. The edge of the sphere flashes less than a second later when the wraith slams into it, clawing wildly.

Behind her, she hears Alex gasp. In front of her, the wraith backs away, the glossy black pits of its eyes focusing on her.

Nico smiles when the wraith tenses, hunkering down and hissing at her. "Didn't I say you were dead if you ever came here again?"

Two Toes rakes the earth with one clawed foot, leaving a deep gouge in the dirt. Two Toes hisses, tail flicking back and forth, muscles tense and ready.

"You think this is _your_ turf?" Nico lets her shield dissipate. She widens her smile, showing her teeth. "Prove it."

Two Toes’ body uncoils, propelling himself at Nico far faster than her muscles could ever hope to respond. In less than second, Nico will have eleven claws backed by half a ton of muscles attacking four different parts of her body simultaneously.

In other words, Two Toes is _way_ too slow. Because this isn’t about muscle, this is about will.

" _Snare_ ," Nico growls, and in the place where the shape of her mind’s desire and the power of her staff meet, the world responds. The earth beneath Two Toes splits and tree roots whip out, wrapping around the wraith’s tail first, bringing its leap to an abrupt end an inch short of Nico. Two Toes hits the ground, hissing and clawing, but more roots rise up to trip each of the wraith’s limbs in turn.

Nico smirks at the struggling creature. “Hmm, looks like the turf made its choice.” She takes a step forward and points the tip of her staff at one of Two Toes’ furiously glaring eyes. “Now. _Burn_.”

The Old Forest doesn’t much like fire. The wraith has as much black magic as blood flowing in its veins, protecting it from most blades and many spells. It makes no difference. Not when Nico is angry, not when her own blood is burning, not when she has a point to make. A lance of flame so focused, so hot it’s almost invisible bursts out of her staff, burning through Two Toes’ eye in one instant, carving a furrow deep into his brain in the next. Two Toes thrashes wildly, but his struggle against the binding roots is as useless as it is brief. After a few seconds, a wisp of acrid smoke curling from his ruined eye socket is the only movement his body makes.

Nico nods once. "There. Take him, with my thanks. That's a debt less I'm owed by this grove.”

The earth shifts and rumbles and the roots writhe and tug, and then, moments later, the earth is still again. Two Toes’ corpse and the roots of the trees are both buried beneath the ground, which looks barely disturbed.

Nico finds herself facing Gert and Molly, both of whom stare at her with different shades of awe on their faces. Nico's satisfaction at that only survives for as long as it takes Chase to pick up his sword and step in front of her, his body still protected by magical energy. “Wh-who goes there?” he barks, the way his voice cracks doing nothing for his intimidation factor.

Before Nico can answer, Alex does. He drifts slowly into view from Nico’s left, his sling ready, saying, “Isn’t it obvious? She’s the Witch of the Woods.”

"Oh, greeeeat." Gert clutches Molly, and it's no longer clear if she's offering or seeking comfort. "The wraith was just a warm-up! Now we get to face The One Who Walks in Darkness, The Feeder of Ravens, The Last Voice Heard in the Shadows, The Nemesis of Light, The Slayer of Hope, The--"

Nico raises her eyebrows. She's impressed at how many new names she's gained in the last couple of years. She likes them, even if most of them refer to things she isn't and has never done. The names mean that people fear her. That's good. Nico likes the idea that the people of the Shining City in particular are afraid.

"Gert! Sh." Molly elbows Gert, cutting off the litany. "Um, hi! I...like your dress!"

Nico blinks. Her dress is a tattered thing she made with clumsy stitches out of the cloth she bargained for, then dyed black in the Midnight Grove. The magic she fed into the cloth makes it easier to move quickly and quietly through even the densest brush. Nico's never really thought of her clothes as things to be liked, just things that are.

Gert elbows Molly this time. "You shouldn't talk directly to the witch, Molly!"

"You're a witch, Gert." Molly rolls her eyes. "I talk to you all the time."

"I'm a linguist and a ritualist! I'm not the kind of witch who uses black magic and hexes and curses! I--" Gert hesitates, brow wrinkling. "Shit, no, you're right. We're both witches. I should be supportive, not judgemental." Gert takes a deep breath then offers Nico a tentative smile. "I, uh, thank you? For saving us? Did, ah...did you _mean_ to save us, or...?"

Alex clears his throat, and Nico snaps her eyes back to him. "It seemed like you were settling your own business."

"Not, uh, not that your help was unwelcome," Chase adds. "We were struggling. Slightly. We could have handled it, but--"

"We were dead. She saved us," Molly says quietly. "You know it."

"I..." Chase's shoulders droop. He sheathes his sword. "Yeah. I do."

"You aren't saved," Nico says. It comes out sharper than she meant, and she sees the four of them tense and exchange quick glances. Chase takes a step forward, putting himself more obviously between Nico and the others. His hand hovers over the hilt of his sword. Nico scowls at him. "You won't be safe until you're out of the Old Forest."

Alex shakes his head. "We can't leave yet. We don't dispute that this is your territory, and we'd rather not fight you, but there's something here that we need."

Nico snorts. "You're trying to hold yourself like they aren't, but you have broken ribs, Alex. Chase's gauntlets and Gert's shawl can only carry so much power, and you've spent a lot of it barely surviving one attack. And Molly only has one knife, now. If you try to go deeper into the woods, you'll die. But..." Nico shrugs. "That isn't my business. Do what you want. Just not here."

They stare at her. Then they exchange a series of looks Nico can't quite read, but she can sense that they're uneasy again. Molly in particular is staring at her with alarm.

Nico feels an unexpected tug of something like regret. "You're all too loud," she mutters. "I heard you talking."

"Oh," Gert says, tension easing out of her shoulders. "Right. I mean, it's not like you can read our minds!" She glances nervously at Chase. "You can't, can you?"

Nico ignores her.

Alex sighs, then winces. He touches the dent in his breastplate. "I think we have to go back."

Chase stares at him. "What? But...but if we go back with nothing--"

"We get to come back another time, better prepared," Alex says firmly. He pauses, considering Nico. "We might even have a guide now. If she'll help us."

"What? _Me_?" Nico has lingered this long because it's been nice, listening to human voices that aren't distorted by the limits of her scrying magic. But now she feels torn between hot anger at Alex's presumption and some...warmer feeling, that someone is asking for her help. "Your Ruling Council set a bounty on my head. Why should I help anyone from the Shining City?"

Molly's brow wrinkles. "You just...did, though. Didn't you?"

"What if we were to owe you a debt?" Alex says quickly. It's almost a relief that he does, because it means that Nico doesn't have to come up with an answer to Molly. "If you help us, we'll owe you. That's...that's how you work, right?"

"You already owe me." Nico scowls at him. He keeps his expression neutral, but she's pleased to see that his hands are shaking, ever so slightly. "I...I'd need proof that you can pay your debts before I'd let you incur another."

Chase shifts from one foot to the other, adjusting his balance. "Alex, I don't know..."

"No. No, she's right. We owe her, and a good faith gesture on our part seems more than fair. What did you have in mind, Witch of the Woods?"

"Just..." It's on the blade of her tongue to say that he should call her 'Nico,' but names can be dangerous things, things best not given too freely. Especially when Gert is a ritualist and some of the others might have magical training of their own. Knowing a name makes it too easy to scry out the person it's attached to, or to curse them, or to send something after them. "Just give me tea," she blurts instead, regretting it the moment she gives voice to the desire that's been nagging her all day.

Alex and the others exchange more looks.

"We do not have tea," Chase says slowly. "Tea is not something we thought to bring to the Old Forest..."

Nico can feel them all staring at her, and she can feel her face getting hot. Her mind is blank. She can't think clearly, not with so many eyes focused on her, not when they look less afraid of her now. Trees are so much easier to deal with than people. Nico hasn't had much practice with people. All at once, she remembers her time with the princess, and what the princess had so freely shared with her, asking nothing in return but Nico's company. She licks her lips and snaps, "Fine. Give me cake, then."

"Wh-what?" Gert snorts, then quickly claps a hand over her mouth. "Sorry! Sorry, it's just...I didn't think that The Flayer of Dreams liked tea parties!"

"We...don't normally carry cake with us. Or tea," Alex says, studying Nico intently.

And Nico hates it. She hates the way he's looking at her, like he can see inside her head. She hates the way Gert's barely trying to hide her laughter, the way Chase is smirking. She hates that she's said something so obviously _stupid_. She feels rage building inside her, feels pain where her fingers clench her staff too tightly. 

"You're no use to me then," she hisses, feeling no satisfaction at all at how quickly the laughter falls from Gert's lips or how Chase's eyes widen when the trees creak and hunch down over him and his friends. "You can reach the edge of the woods from here in an hour." Nico twists her lips into a sneer. " _If_ the Old Forest lets you. I don't care either way."

"What? We're so close to the edge?" Chase shakes his head. "But we've been walking for hours!"

"In circles, apparently," Gert mutters. "What do we--"

"We could _bring_ you tea," Alex says gently. "And cake. Tomorrow. If you help us get out of here today, we'll bring you what you ask for tomorrow. And we'll owe you another debt, for guiding us out. So if you think of something else you want, between now and then, we could get that for you, too. And then maybe we could revisit the idea of you helping us mount a real expedition into the forest. How does that sound?"

Nico hesitates.

Gert clears her throat, stepping forward warily. "We won't help you hurt anyone. We won't do that. But...yeah. We owe you. We'll pay up."

"You'd better," Nico mutters. "Fine. It's a deal. But I have other things to do today, so let's go."

She strides past them all, clutching her anger and confusion tight, trying to ignore the roiling in her stomach, trying to ignore the voice in the back of her mind that tells her that this is a mistake. She stomps through the woods, not caring where she puts her feet, daring the trees to trip her.

They don't.

Nothing impairs Nico's progress, though the same can't be said of the four following her. Nico's anger slowly cools as she listens to them stumbling and cursing behind her. There are times when she almost _likes_ that she is accepted as part of the forest, that she belongs where others don't.

After a longer silence than Nico expected any of them to be able to maintain, Chase whispers, "That _smell_ , though...it's killing me."

"Shh," Gert hisses. "Don't let her hear you!"

It reminds Nico that there's a whole world of people out there, bigger by far than the confines of the forest and her need for revenge. There is a whole world out there, and _Nico_ is the one who doesn't belong. Who _can't_ belong. Her stomach clenches.

"It's manticore venom," she calls out, without bothering to look back. "Manticores make their nests much further south, but rogue males come this far north from time to time. They release clouds of venom to mark their territory. Most things in this part of the forest know better than to take on a manticore, so..." Now she does look back, meeting Chase's eye. "My _smell_ means we won't have to worry about more monsters _actually_ killing you."

"Oh..." Chase says, his voice strained. He tries to smile. "So, uh, where did you get--"

"I killed a manticore and milked its poison glands. Then I separated the scent from the toxins with a binding ritual and mixed the scent with a tree sap base to preserve it. Any more dumb questions? No? Good."

Nico storms off, setting an even quicker pace than before. She's hungry and tired and her head hurts and she just wants to be done with them all.

"Hey, uh...they didn't mean anything bad. Chase is just an idiot sometimes." Alex says, jogging to keep up with her. "But that camouflage you're using? That's _really_ smart. You're really--"

Nico rolls her eyes. "I know what I am. Everybody needs to shut up, or I'll let anything your noise brings down on us eat you all."

She lengthens her stride. The trees oblige her by pressing close, forcing Alex to fall behind again. Nico is in front of them all, in control, alone. She tells herself that that's exactly how she wants things to be.

* * *

Nico takes them to the point where the trees thin out and the become younger and less grey. The trade road loops around the forest here, curving towards the Radiant Gate, the entrance to the Shining City. The city is vast, bigger than Nico remembers, and the white stone walls that defend it glow even as the last light of day begins to slip away over the horizon.

She stops at the edge of the forest, glaring up at the Radiant Gate. The gate is always open in daylight, but is always guarded. She is a few hundred feet away, but Nico knows in an instant that the Guardian isn't on duty there. Nico has spent enough time over the years watching for him that she can recognise the Guardian even when he isn't glowing white with the power of his magic. Nico has learned to recognise him by his posture, his gait, the way he holds himself even when he's still. A half-dozen men and women in the armour of the Radiant Legion are stationed before the gate today, their spears and their armour so rich in magic their outlines are an iridescent blur.

Nico can't quite hold in a sigh. She isn't sure if she's relieved or disappointed that the Guardian is absent. It feels like there has been a storm brewing in her bones all day and the fight with Two Toes wasn't enough of an outlet. Her time with Alex and the others has only made things worse, all the more because none of them have _tried_ to make things worse for her. So far. She won't be able to decide what she thinks of them until she sees whether or not they honour the deal they made.

Which she won't find out until tomorrow. Which means she won't sleep tonight, because Nico knows from experience that sleep won't come when her bones ache in expectation of lightning.

Alex joins her. The others push ahead, beyond the shadows cast by the trees, though they stay close, waiting for Alex. Alex smiles at her, even though the pace she set has left him pale and sweating and obviously favouring his left side. "Well, looks like we made it."

"Yeah," Gert mutters, picking leaves out of her hair. "We didn't get what we came for, or even find any evidence of the ruins of the first Shining City, and we're going to get in trouble when we get back to the current Shining City. But, sure! We made it."

Nico purses her lips.

"What is it?" Alex asks, studying her carefully. "Do you know the ruins?"

"There are a lot of ruins. You'd need to be more specific."

Alex grins. "You are exactly what we need! I'm so glad we met you."

Nico frowns and looks towards the city. She points with her staff. "See that boulder?"

He blinks, then focuses on the huge stone that sits beside the road at the foot of slope the Shining City rests on. "The boundary stone? What about it?"

"Be there at dawn tomorrow with my things. Or never come near the woods again."

Alex's grin fades, but he's still smiling. "I'll be there. Don't worry."

Chase clears his throat. "You'll be in the healing pools, Alex. One of us will go."

"I'll go!" Molly says suddenly. "Unless...you could come with us now? I've been thinking it the whole way back and it makes way more sense than leaving you in that place with all the monsters."

"Molly, stop." Gert shakes her head. "I don't have time to explain all of the ways that idea is terrible before the sun goes down, but that idea is terrible in _so_ many ways that even a brief summary should--"

"We _could_ try to sneak you in," Alex says, rubbing his chin. "There are other ways into the city than the Radiant Gate. We could--"

" _No_ ," Nico snaps, her voice cracking. "I will never set foot in that _fucking_ place." She won't need to, to draw the Guardian out. And once the Guardian is dead, she'll turn her back on the Shining City. It didn't want her and she doesn't want it. "The boulder. Dawn. I don't care who comes, just have my things."

She turns and walks back into the woods, careful not to look at the expressions on their faces, hoping they could only see the anger on hers and not any of the other things she's feeling.

* * *

It's a long night, but a busy one at least. Nico has to walk back to her old camping ground and find a tree willing to let her sleep in its branches. She has to mark the area with manticore scent and inscribe alarm wards in the earth beneath her sleeping spot. She has to ignore the pain in her head while she visits a stream, filling her waterskin and drinking until her stomach is full to help suppress her hunger.

And then she has to lie in the branches, cold and alone, listening to the trees telling secrets and lies to the wind, waiting for sleep that doesn't come.

* * *

Nico returns to the edge of the forest an hour before dawn. She rests her back against an oak she planted seven years ago and says, "Are you growing like we talked about? Because I might need your help soon."

She laughs when a leaf lands on her head. She tucks the leaf into her bag then sits at the base of the tree. She watches the city, waiting to see who or what might be coming to meet her. She doesn't really think that they'll betray her or try to set a trap, but that's no reason to be incautious. There's no reason to seek conflict, either, unless the Guardian comes for her. She shouldn't face him now, of course, not when she's so tired and confused she can't remember what hate feels like. No, if the four she rescued betray her, Nico will slip back into the woods. She'll rebuild her old camp, she'll hunt so that she can fill her belly, and then she'll put the last pieces of her plan in place. The plan that will force the Guardian out of the city and finish things at last.

Time passes slowly, but it passes. Nico watches the guard change on the walls, she watches smoke rise up into the lightening sky as the city and its cook fires wake, she watches the Radiant Gate open in advance of the day and she watches a tall figure walk down the road to the boundary stone.

Nico frowns as she climbs to her feet. The approaching figure is tall, but it isn't Chase. She's a woman, but she obviously isn't Gert or Molly. Nico retreats deeper into shadow, ready to run, but something makes her pause. Something makes her keep watching as the woman walks towards the boundary stone. She wears a yellow sun dress and carries no obvious weapons or enchantments. She carries a large bag over her shoulder, wears her long, golden hair in a braid that hangs down the side of her face. Her eyes are blue, deeper and bluer than the sky in summer and her face is serene and wonderful.

When she reaches the boulder, the woman stops and looks around. She spots Nico almost immediately, as if Nico wasn't surrounded by deep shadows but standing in a sunbeam. "Hi!" Her face lights up, her blue eyes seem to glow, her smile is wide and genuine. "Our mutual friends couldn't make it, so I brought you what you asked for in their place. I'm Karolina."

And even if it's the first time that Nico has heard her name, she still knows exactly who it is who has come to meet her. Slowly, her heart pounding and her mind struggling to understand how it's possible that she's here, Nico steps out of the shadows and goes to meet her princess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I, uh, started watching Runaways and suddenly there was a whole fic in my head and I've spent the last week frantically trying to get it back out again. I hope you liked the first part, do let me know your thoughts in the comments! See you next time!


	2. The Princess

There are a lot of things that Nico should be thinking about as she abandons the shelter of the forest. But other than making sure to keep the bulk of the boundary stone between herself and any watchers there might be at the Radiant Gate, Nico can only think about one thing.

Her princess got _tall_.

Karolina was a little taller than Nico five years ago, but now she stands on long, sun-bronzed legs a whole head higher than Nico. Walking towards her makes Nico's stomach feel the way it does when she stands on a thin branch at the top of a tall tree that doesn't much like her.

It's strange, because Karolina isn't as tall as Chase and she somehow looks even less threatening than him. But when Nico finally slips into a shadow in the lee of the boundary stone, stopping just a few feet from a smiling Karolina, that feeling ripples through Nico's stomach again. She can feel sweat on her palms, too, and her heart is working harder than it did when she fought Two Toes yesterday.

Maybe it's the fact that she's closer to the Shining City than she has been in ten years that's making her feel so tense. Maybe it's the fact that Alex and the others didn't show up. Maybe it's the fact that Karolina is the one who did, and Nico thought she'd never see her again. Nico looks up at Karolina, searching for some sign that Karolina recognises her. She looks for something to say, and comes up with nothing better than: "Hello."

"Hi!" Karolina unslings her bag and begins rooting around inside it. "So, I brought some green tea and some black tea. I wasn't sure what particular variety you liked--for someone as smart as Alex is, you'd think he'd _ask_ , wouldn't you? But he didn't, so I went with my favourites. I hope you like them! And that...I'm not talking too much...which, I clearly am! So...here!"

Nico finds herself presented with two small wooden boxes. She takes them, frowning as she studies them, finding it easier than looking directly at Karolina. "I didn't know there _were_ varieties of tea..."

The words leak out before she can weigh them and Nico feels her face heat up. She snaps her head up, glaring at Karolina, daring her to laugh at Nico's ignorance. But Karolina doesn't laugh. She leans her shoulder against the boulder, bringing her eye level down, closer to Nico's. Her eyes are the bluest things that Nico has ever seen, and the kindest she’s known since her father’s when he was tucking her into bed at night.

"I guess there aren't any tea houses in the forest," Karolina says softly. "Have you...always lived there?"

"There are nettles. And herbs. I know how to make tisanes for myself. I don't _need_ this." Nico shakes the boxes, pleasantly surprised to discover that each is fuller than the box she found last month. "But I'm owed it, so I'll take it. Where is Alex, anyway? Where are any of them?"

"They all say hello, but..." If Karolina is put out that Nico isn't answering her question, she doesn't show it. She touches the end of her braid and looks up at the sky, as if reading her answer there. "Alex wanted to come himself, but he's being treated. He broke three ribs and hurt his neck. And when his parents found his breastplate, they knew it wasn't an ordinary accident. And then they got everybody else's parents involved and pretty soon they figured out that Alex, Chase, Gert and Molly had gone to the Old Forest and now they're forbidden from leaving the city."

"They didn't come just because their parents told them not to?"

"Not...exactly." Karolina winces. She meets Nico's eye again, smiling ruefully. "Their parents make up the Ruling Council of the Shining City. Alex's father is the commander of the Radiant Guard. So when he forbids someone from leaving, theeey don't get to leave."

It's ice down Nico's spine. "The council? The _commander_? Shit! They'll have the fucking Guardian after me! I never should've trusted any of--"

"Whoah!" Karolina reaches out, stopping just short of touching Nico. "They're my friends and they needed my help, so they told me about you. But they didn't tell their parents. No one else knows I'm meeting you here. You don't...you don't have to worry about the Guardian. Or anyone." Karolina presses the hand she reached out with to her heart. "I swear it, by the Gods' light. You're safe here."

Nico hesitates. She knows that staying is a risk, one she doesn't need to take, but...on the occasions when Nico has allowed herself, she's wondered what might have happened to the princess. Nico has sometimes even wondered what it might be like, to meet her again. And now here she is, and Nico has a chance to find out.

"It's okay, I promise." Karolina starts digging into her bag again. "And I believe you're still owed cake. I brought cherry cake?"

Nico is presented with a cloth-wrapped bundle the size and shape of small loaf of bread. She accepts it, sniffing at it. It smells sweet and good. "Okay. Okay, we're done. For now. I..."

She trails off, unsure of what else to say. Karolina doesn't let the silence last long, though.

"I, uh, I brought some bread and fruit, too." Karolina fiddles with her braid and puts on another smile. "For breakfast. I haven't had breakfast yet. Would you like to join me for breakfast?"

Nico hesitates, peering round the rock to see if any of the guards at the gate are looking their way.

"They won't see you if we stay on this side of the boundary stone,” Karolina says, slipping round the huge rock and even closer to Nico. “And they won't bother us. I come down here almost every day to watch travellers on the road. They're used to me being here."

Nico returns her attention to Karolina's face. "Won't they think it's strange that you're eating alone and talking to yourself?"

"Oh, I eat down here by myself a lot. And most people think I'm strange already!" Karolina smiles, but it doesn't come close to reaching her eyes this time. She quickly looks down at her bag as she fumbles more things out of it.

"And that doesn't bother you?" Nico doesn't bother hiding the suspicion in her voice. "I'm...not an expert, but I think it would bother most people."

"I suppose." Karolina meets her eye reluctantly. "I suppose it would. But I'm not...I can't really change what the people here think of me. I try to accept it and not worry about it and just...be me."

"It's that easy for you?"

Karolina snorts, but her expression softens. "I said I _try_...ah, I'm sorry, I just realised I don't know what to call you."

"I'm...the Witch of the Woods. I thought you knew that."

"Oh! I mean, I did. I do. Is...that what you _want_ me to call you?"

Nico glares at her, wary of a joke or a trap. But Karolina's expression is so earnest, her eyes so wide and blue and patient, that Nico finds herself relaxing slightly.

"Nico. My name is Nico." It comes out in a rush, before she can consider all of the reasons why she shouldn't trust her name so readily to someone from the Shining City. Before she has to wonder why she suddenly feels a need to hear her true name on someone else's lips. "That's...don't tell anyone else. But...you can call me Nico."

"Nico..." Karolina grins, her eyes shining, and Nico has to look away. Karolina is suddenly harder to look at than the Guardian was in the fullness of his power. But where he was cold and glaring, the light in Karolina's eyes, the dazzling whiteness of her teeth, and the soft pink sheen of her lips are warm and inviting. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Nico. Are you hungry? Should we eat?"

Nico is suddenly reminded that she _is_ hungry. She tells herself that she's too tired to hunt well and that it's safer to accept Karolina's invitation than to trudge back to the forest right now. She risks looking at Karolina's face and nodding, but the answering smile she receives makes her have to look away again.

Nico watches as Karolina puts their breakfast together. She takes a blue blanket from her bag. She spreads on the grass, inviting Nico to sit with another smile and a pat of her hand on the soft wool. Nico lowers herself into a sitting position slowly and warily but Karolina produces nothing more dangerous from her bag than a loaf of dark bread, a jar of dates, a jar of dried figs and a pair of oranges.

"Please, eat. I know it isn't much, but I hope...oh, I should have brought cups," Karolina frowns at the pile of food on the blanket, her mouth turning down. "I should have brought something to _drink_. I was in kind of a rush and I...I could go back--"

"I have water," Nico says quickly, tugging her waterskin from her bag. "We can share. Since, uh, since you're sharing food."

Karolina fiddles with the end of her braid, smiling slightly. "Ah...thank you, then. For sharing."

"It's only fair," Nico mutters, keenly aware that it isn't. Her water isn't enough recompense for all this food. She pushes that thought away. “Why do you watch the road every day? Are you waiting for someone?”

“No, nothing like that. Or, not anyone specific. I just...I spent a lot of my life travelling. I grew up on the road. I miss it, sometimes.” Karolina sighs, shaking her head. “All the time.”

Nico frowns. “Why not just...go then?”

“I can’t.” Karolina hesitates. “I have people here. And...responsibilities. You know?”

“No. Or...maybe.” Nico considers. “I don’t have people. But I have responsibilities. A responsibility. I can’t let that go.”

“You have no one? I’m sorry.”

“Why? You don’t even know what happened.” Nico can’t help the edge that enters her voice. “And it has nothing to do with you.”

Karolina opens her mouth, hesitates, then closes it. She nods meekly. “Okay. Sorry.”

Nico looks down at her hands, abruptly ashamed at how completely she’s removed all traces of a smile from the face of someone who smiles so easily. "It's fine."

"So, um, you’re not eating. Is it...you don't like taking things from people, do you? Not without some kind of...trade?" Nico looks up to find that Karolina is blushing and fiddling with her hair again. “I mean, that’s what Alex said. Well, implied."

Nico shrugs. The words of her mother, from one of the only lessons she taught Nico directly, flow easily onto her tongue. "Everything is a trade. Nothing is free. If someone gives you something, they always want something back. Better to settle your debts as soon as you can. Best to avoid them altogether and put others in _your_ debt instead."

A silence follows that.

"You steal things," Karolina says eventually, her voice lacking in accusation. "Do you think that doesn't create a debt? When you raid trading caravans, you deprive--"

Nico glares at her. "I _think_ that the people I steal from owe me already. I've never taken anything from anyone that didn't work for the Shining City, and after what was taken from _me_ \--"

She forces herself to stop. She looks at her hands again, willing them to stop shaking.

"I...see," Karolina murmurs. She picks up Nico's waterskin and takes a long drink. She puts the skin back on the blanket, brushing a few drops of spilled water from her chin and grins triumphantly. "Now I owe you for the water. Please, eat something."

Nico hesitates for another few heartbeats, then gives in to her hunger and to the entreaty in Karolina’s eyes. She pounces on the loaf, tearing it in half. She puts one half back on the blanket before focusing her attention on putting the other half into her mouth as quickly as possible. The only times she's eaten bread in the last decade, it's usually been stale. This time, it still has some residual heat from the oven. It's by far the best bread she's ever tasted.

Karolina picks up an orange but she watches Nico with wide, wide eyes, and Nico isn't sure she likes that. Worse, she isn’t sure that she _dislikes_ it. Rather than try to figure it out either way, she says the first thing that comes into her head. "Are you a princess?"

"Am I...?" Karolina stares at Nico, her eyes wider than ever. She suddenly laughs, the sound so joyous Nico doesn’t even mind that she’s being laughed at. "No, I’m not a...a princess? My parents are actors! I don’t even have noble blood. Well, I do. I suppose. On my...my father's side."

"Oh." Nico considers everything she’s ever learned about acting. "So, your parents are liars?"

"That's not exactly..." Karolina sighs. Her thumb pierces the rind of her orange, driving too deep, into the flesh of the fruit. Juice leaks onto her fingers. "Yeah. They are. Just...just the biggest liars. Even to each other. Even to me."

Nico finds her attention sharply focused on Karolina as she absently licks the spilled juice from her skin. Nico's mouth is suddenly dry, which is more than a little awkward because it's still full of bread. It takes some time to swallow it down and drink some water. That whole time Karolina stares into nothing, her fingers automatically peeling and segmenting the orange. Even distracted she eats with dainty motions that make Nico suddenly conscious that she's doing things wrong.

The more she looks at Karolina, Nico can't help but think that this _whole thing_ is wrong. Karolina is from the Shining City. Karolina is sun-bronzed and tall and full of smiles. She smells like flowers and has friends and a life and...and Nico doesn't know how to _do_ this. Nico is a pale, ragged thing, her clothes torn, her body still smelling faintly of manticore venom. Her head is full of the wrong kinds of words, the wrong kinds of ideas. Nico's heart is too full of hate, too full of the need for revenge. Nico doesn't understand the hollow ache she feels sitting in the sunlight with Karolina, sharing food and water like it's _nothing_ , but she decides that she doesn't want to feel it anymore.

"I'm leaving." She stands up, stuffing what's left of her half of the loaf into her bag along with her water. "I've got things to do."

"What?" Karolina looks up, startled. She discards what's left of her orange and begins to stand up. "I...wait. Here, I was going to give you the blanket--"

"No!" Nico glares at her. "Your friends owed me. They still do. But you don't. Okay? I'll collect the last debt from them when I'm ready. We're done."

"Nico." Names have power, even when they aren't being used as part of a spell. Nico freezes at the sound of her name, hesitating long enough for Karolina to get up and move beside her. "Nico, I'm sorry if I did something...but you can't go like this."

"I knew this would happen!" Nico reaches for her staff, shrunk down and tucked into her belt. "You think you can stop me?"

"Of course not! I wouldn't _try_ to stop you, not by...not by force! But you haven't thought this through. I _do_ owe you, Nico. We need to talk about that before you go. That's all I meant."

Nico hesitates. "What? No, you--"

"You saved my friends, Nico," Karolina says, her voice low and earnest. "I _owe_ you. Or are you suggesting that my friends' lives don't matter to me?"

"What? No! I...I don't know. I suppose they must...?"

"They do," Karolina says firmly. She stoops, picking up the jars and dropping them into Nico's still open bag. "But you need to go, and I'm holding you back. And that isn't right, is it?"

"No...?" Nico says, bewildered.

"No, it isn't." Karolina stoops again and picks up the blanket. She shakes out the crumbs and loose blades of grass and begins to fold it up. "So, if we're going to arrange settling _my_ debt to you, we'll need to do that another time. How would tomorrow be?"

"I...can't--"

"Okay. So..." Karolina purses her lips, her expression distant. Absently, she presses the folded blanket into Nico's arms, speaking again before Nico can protest. "I'm going to come here in the early mornings. Every morning. When you're free, join me. We'll talk things over then, okay? Bring water and I'll bring food. Deal?"

Nico shakes her head. "I--"

"You need to go," Karolina says smoothly. She smiles suddenly. "But I hope you get a chance to come back soon. I enjoyed talking to you, Nico."

"Oh. I..." Nico shakes her head. "You're trying to trick me! Somehow..."

"No, I'm trying to convince you," Karolina responds. She grins, sudden and dazzling. "Is it working?"

Nico feels dizzy. "Why do you want me to...what are you getting out of this?"

"You really want to know?" Karolina winks at her. "Then you'll need to come back another time, because now _I_ need to go. Bye, Nico!"

She grins wider than ever then turns and strides away. She waves without looking back.

Nico clutches her bag and her new blanket and tries to make sense of her morning. She can't, because it doesn't make sense. _Karolina_ doesn't make sense. Nico knows that she should keep her distance from the Shining City for a while, perhaps a few weeks. She should avoid Karolina and her friends, maybe even write off their debts. Collecting might be too risky, given who their parents are.

Nico knows what she should do. Nico also knows, the second Karolina is out of her sight, that she's going to come back to the boundary stone the day after tomorrow and that she's going to bring water in the hopes that she'll get to share it with Karolina.

* * *

She spends the rest of that day and the next repairing her camp. She strikes a deal with a tree to weave its branches into a sleeping platform for her in exchange for hunting and killing the wraith that likes to sharpen its claws on the tree’s bark. The hunt takes some time, and wraith meat is hardly her favourite food, but it allows her to begin building her larder again.

Not that she’s in any danger of going hungry when she has all of the food that Karolina tricked her into taking. It bothers Nico when ever she thinks about Karolina, and she spends too much time thinking about her. She thinks about Karolina when she’s enjoying tea and cake that evening. She thinks about Karolina when she’s wrapped up in her new blanket in her tree that night. She even thinks about Karolina the next morning while she’s using her staff to inscribe fresh wards in the earth around her sleeping tree, to the point where she misaligns the runes of one and doesn’t notice until she’s empowering it.

The Old Forest doesn’t like fire, thankfully, or the explosion Nico causes might have left her with more than a badly burned dress and a coating of dirt and mud all over her body.

She curses and pats the flames out of her ever more ragged dress. She shakes the dirt from her hair. She whispers, “I don’t understand her. The others wanted something from me. She must want something, too. But what? Why doesn’t she just ask? And why should I care?”

Nico glares at the small crater her attempt at an enchantment has left behind and thinks about the amount of work she still has to do to finish her circle of wards. She groans. “Why do I care?”

She doesn’t know why, but Nico knows that she does. And she knows that she won’t be able to focus until she knows what Karolina wants from her.

* * *

Nico wakes early the next day. She goes to a nearby stream to bathe, taking her time to make sure that all of the dirt from yesterday is gone. She puts on her dress, feeling oddly fretful at how tattered it is. She decides to forego more manticore venom today. She doubts that she’ll need it, and reasons that whatever safety it might afford her in the forest, the potent odour will be a liability outside it.

She makes sure to fill her waterskin, and she packs the box of black tea, her kettle and a pair of crude cups she made a few years ago into her bag. She takes a firm grip of her staff and a deep breath, then marches to the edge of the woods. She sits with her back to another oak and watches the boundary stone, waiting for the sun and for Karolina.

The sun comes first, but Karolina follows soon after. Her hair is loose today. She wears a white blouse embroidered with bright, floral patterns and woollen trousers, dyed a deep blue. She carries the same bag on her shoulder, and she carries herself with the same calm confidence Nico recognises from two days and five years ago. Even before she reaches the stone, Karolina begins to eagerly scan the treeline.

Nico decides to wait, motionless, curious if Karolina will spot her again. Within a minute, she does, and when she does, Karolina’s face lights up. She waves, grinning, and jogs to the side of the boulder that will keep them hidden from watchers at the Radiant Gate. Karolina begins unloading her bag, not looking up to see if Nico's even going to join her, like it doesn't even occur to her that Nico might have doubts.

Nico has so many doubts. But she joins Karolina anyway.

"Hello. Karolina."

"Good morning!" She grins at her. "Nico."

It's strange, hearing her name so often after ten years of avoiding it. It's strange, but not a bad kind of strange.

"I brought water." Nico has to pause, because Karolina stops fussing with her bag and focuses her whole attention on Nico. It's disconcerting, but it still doesn't feel bad. "I brought cups, too. And tea. I...would you like tea?"

"I would _love_ tea." Every time Nico thinks she's seen the most joyous smile possible on Karolina's lips, Karolina proves her wrong. "Thank you, Nico."

"It's fine," Nico mutters. She sets her kettle on the grass, pours water into it, then touches the side of the kettle with her staff. " _Boil_."

Normally, she'd build a fire to do this, but since she doesn't want to attract attention with the smoke, she decides to risk her magic. It only takes a few seconds for the water to start rolling and bubbling and for steam to wisp out into the gathering morning. Nico watches Karolina's face the whole time. She watches, eyes wide, but she seems curious rather than scared.

Nico thinks she likes it, that Karolina isn't scared of her.

"That's impressive," Karolina says, looking up at Nico. "That level of control isn't easy."

"Are you a witch, too? Or a wizard?"

"No." Karolina shakes her head, but her nose scrunches up. "Ah, not really. I mean, I'm not. But..." She sighs. She fiddles with her hair for a moment, her eyes distant, then looks up at Nico. "I have a sort of...wild talent, apparently. I only found out a couple of years ago, though, and I have...control issues. Gert's been trying to teach me some things." Karolina frowns. "So many things...I don't always follow what she's saying. But she's trying really hard to help me!"

Nico frowns. "Isn't Gert a student? Why don't you have a teacher?"

"I'm not allowed." Karolina shrugs, but it's obvious from her downcast eyes and her downturned mouth that it matters to her. "The Council ruled against it."

"Why?"

"Ah...that is a long story, Nico." Karolina darts a look up at her, her teeth worrying her lower lip. "Do you want to hear it?"

"Yes." Nico sits. She adds a handful of leaves to the cooling water before she seeks eye contact with Karolina again. "You don't want to tell me, though. Do you?"

"It's not that I..." Karolina groans, briefly hiding her face in her hands. "Sorry. You're right. But it's not that I don't want to tell _you_ , it's just...I don't want to talk about it right now. It involves all the shitty things my parents did, and I've been _living it_ for over a year and--'

"Your parents. The liars." Nico puts on a frown. "I thought you'd be more keen to talk about them."

She waits, heart thumping painfully in a space that feels suddenly too small for it while Karolina gapes at her. Then Karolina laughs, and the pressure in Nico's chest eases. "Nico! Did you just make a _joke_?"

"No. I'm the terrifying Witch of the Woods, remember?" Nico bends over the kettle to hide her smile. "Tea's ready. Did you bring more of that bread?" 

She feels an almost savage pride when she passes Karolina a cup of green tea and sees a happy smile on Karolina's face. A smile that _Nico_ put there. It feels good, knowing she can do that.

"I did bring more of that bread. You seemed to like it." Karolina picks up a clay pot and presents it to Nico. "And I have honey! I brought butter, too. And we have apples." Karolina digs the various items out of her bag, along with plates and a knife. She takes a sip of her tea and smiles at Nico. "Help yourself."

They eat and drink in near silence. It feels less strange than it did the other day, and Nico wonders if it's discovering that there are things Karolina doesn't want to talk about that makes the difference. Because that means that there are things neither of them want to say, and now both of them know that, it feels like they're on more equal footing, in a way.

Still, there's only so much silence Nico can expect from people who live in a city, and Karolina breaks it after she's had her fill of bread and honey. She breaks the skin of an apple with her neat white teeth and asks, "So, uh, what have you been doing? Ah, I mean, you said you had things to do the other day and you were busy yesterday, and I just...I wondered what the terrifying Witch of the Woods usually does with her day?"

Nico studies the bottom of her teacup while she considers the question. "It depends. The last couple of days, I was making camp. I was living deeper in the woods for a while, but I decided to move back here." Nico frowns. "I _usually_...explore. Hunt. Train. Talk to the trees."

She flicks a glance at Karolina. It's not a surprise at this point that Karolina doesn't scoff, but her reaction is still...pleasant. She's watching Nico, leaning forward, brushing her hair away from her face so she can fully focus on her.

"What...what's it like? Talking to the trees, I mean."

"Mostly like talking to people, I suppose. It depends on the tree. They're quieter than people, though." Nico takes a deep breath. She tells herself she isn't being weak and forces herself to add, "I like that."

Karolina's mouth twists into an awkward smile. Her eyes dip down. "I must seem so loud to you."

"No! I mean, yes, but..." Nico chews the inside of her lip, thinking frantically. "Sometimes loud is good. Sometimes I...I miss loud." She stops there, her throat locking, until Karolina looks up again. "Your friends are...but you aren't too loud."

Karolina laughs, a soft breath of sound that somehow makes it easier for Nico to breathe. "Thanks! I'm flattered. I've never been called not too loud before!"

Nico looks down at her cup again, fighting another smile.

"I know what you mean, though. About my friends? Gert is...really passionate about so many things. Which I admire! But...she can be so intense. Molly is really sweet. Really kind." Karolina sighs. "But some of the people she spends time with..."

"You mean Alex? Chase?"

"No, not them. They're both good people at heart. I was thinking of Eiffel and her crew."

Nico looks at her, raising an eyebrow. "What do you mean, at heart?"

Karolina blushes. "No, I...they are good people. Just...Alex feels the need to _prove_ he's smarter than everyone _all the time_. That can get exhausting. And Chase can be a little self-absorbed. But he's sweet! And they're both loyal friends. And it's not like I'm not flawed...I shouldn't be so judgemental. See? That's a flaw right there."

"Maybe you're too nice," Nico blurts. She focuses on her cup, turning it around and around in her hands. "I think maybe that's your flaw."

"Maybe..." Nico thinks she can _hear_ the smile in Karolina's voice. "Is that even a bad flaw to have?"

"It makes sense at least. Why else would you spend your time with me?" Nico wraps her hands around the cup, squeezing it tight. "I'm all flaws. So. Why _are_ you spending your time with me?"

She didn't mean to be so blunt, or at least, not so soon. Not when things had been...nice. But Nico finds she needs to know. She needs to know what Karolina wants out of this, before Nico starts to get used to food shared under the open sky, to easy smiles, and laughter, and Karolina's warm voice.

Nico needs to know what this is before she makes a mistake.

"I...do I need a reason?"

"Yes." Nico snorts. "I _am_ the Witch of the Woods. Your people hate me. Fear me. Meeting me is a risk to you. Why take it?" Karolina hesitates, refusing to meet Nico's eye. "Karolina. Tell me."

There is a power in names, a power that might be some kind of magic after all. Karolina looks up at the sound of hers, her mouth a tight line. She sucks in a breath, then starts speaking, her voice rising with each word. "Maybe I don't care about the risk! Maybe I spent my whole life happily doing what I was told, believing everything I was told and thinking I was doing the right thing, only to find out it was all _bullshit_. Maybe for the past year I've been trying to learn who I am and how to be and I just...I haven't found any answers, Nico! 

"Maybe I have four friends in the world and I'm tired of seeing the _pity_ in their eyes when they look at me. Which is still better than the way everyone else does. Maybe..." Karolina slumps, letting her hair fall over her face. Wearily she says, "Maybe I thought it'd be different, with you. Maybe I...need a friend. Someone who wasn't there when everyone in the city found out that the man I called my father isn't...isn't actually my father. Someone who wasn't there when my parents tore their marriage apart in public. And for...for all the mess my birth father made. Someone who didn't...who doesn't care about any of that." She peers at Nico through the curtain of her hair. "Maybe I want that someone to be you, Nico."

"You...?" Nico sits rigid, trying to parse everything. It's too much to take in, so she tries to concentrate on the part that immediately affects her. "That's what you want? A...friend?"

"Yes." Karolina snorts. "I mean, I wasn't trying to trick you or...or _buy_ you. I hoped we could just...spend time together? And maybe we'd _become_ friends? That's how it usually works, Nico. That's all I want."

"I..." Nico's hands are sore. It takes an effort to loosen her grip on her cup. Her mouth is dry, her lips are dry, her throat seems to be lined with bark. She swallows. "I can't."

"Why not?" Karolina's eyes are too bright, even in the shadow of her hair. "Why can't you?"

"Because I'm the Witch of the Woods!" Nico springs to her feet. She begins to hastily grab her things. "I am the darkness that your people fear. I am one of the monsters your Guardian would crush if--"

Nico breaks off, stops moving entirely, when Karolina reaches out and touches her wrist.

"No," Karolina says softly. "That's not true. You have a good heart, Nico. You saved my friends. And you didn't do it for tea and...and cherry cake! You didn't do it to put them in your debt. You did it because you wanted to. Because you chose to. Because that's who you are. You are a _good_ person, Nico. I can tell. I'd be lucky if you let me be your friend."

Nico shudders. She wants to pull away, but her muscles won't work. Maybe because she _doesn't_ want to pull away every bit as much. She stares at Karolina, who stares back, and there's something in her eyes that Nico hasn't seen directed at her for over a decade: hope.

Warmth spreads through Nico's body, like it did when Alex asked her for help. But where that was a trickle, this is a flood. Nico tries to wall it off, tries to stay focused on the only thing that matters: killing the Guardian. Karolina can't help her with that. Nico doesn't _want_ Karolina's help with that. Karolina has nothing to offer her.

Except...except she does. She's offering something Nico didn't think she'd ever have again, since she lost Amy.

"I don't..." Nico shakes her head. "I don't know if--"

"Neither do I," Karolina admits. "I'm taking a chance. Making my own choice, for once. But it's your choice, too."

"It might upset some of the trees, if I spend even more time out here." Nico permits herself a tiny smile. "You know trees. They get jealous."

Karolina laughs, and Nico knows she's lost her chance to walk away. Being able to take Karolina's sadness and make it into laughter feels better than any magic she's ever done. It's a kind of power Nico never knew she had, and she revels in the discovery of it.

"Maybe I want them to be jealous," Karolina says, grinning. She runs her fingertips down Nico's arm, her skin warm on Nico's skin. She gently takes Nico's hand in her much softer one and gently squeezes. Her skin is soft and _so warm_. She lets go much too soon. "Thanks, Nico. For taking a chance on me."

"It's fine," Nico says, trying to ignore the tingling in her hand. "But now you owe me an apple."

Karolina laughs again and throws one at her. Nico catches it, biting into it before her smile can become a grin.

She spends the next hour with Karolina, drinking tea, watching people and vehicles travel the road to and from the Shining City, and talking. They're careful not to talk about Nico's past or Karolina's parents, instead focusing on smaller, easier things. Karolina tells Nico about how she befriended Alex, Chase, Gert and Molly and Nico tells Karolina the story of how she saved them.

Nico tests her newfound powers, secretly delighting every time she makes Karolina laugh.

All too soon, though, the traffic on the road begins to increase and Nico begins to feel too exposed. It doesn't take Karolina long to sense her discomfort.

"You need to go, don't you?" Karolina asks when she catches Nico turning her head away from a wagon full of labourers headed for the city.

"Yeah. There's a price on my head. It isn't safe for me out here."

"When will I see you again?" To Nico's surprise, Karolina begins to help her pack her things away. She isn't surprised when she spots Karolina slipping the jar of honey into her bag, but Nico decides not to say anything about it. "Is it okay to keep meeting in the mornings?"

Nico grabs her loaded bag and her kettle. She chews her lip. "It...should be. And I can be here tomorrow?"

Karolina grins. "Me too! See you tomorrow, then!"

"Okay." Nico bites back a smile. "Tomorrow."

Nico walks away. At the edge of the trees, she looks back. Karolina is still there, watching. She smiles and waves to Nico.

Nico waves goodbye to her new friend. Then she walks away, losing herself in the darkness of the Old Forest. But even as the light dims, becoming grey and diffuse, the Old Forest seems somehow brighter than it ever has before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I thought this was going to break into three even parts, but it looks like it's going to be four. Please do let me know what you thought about this one! It'll help as I go work on the next one! :)


	3. Peace

It used to be that the memory of Karolina from five years ago was one of the few treasures in Nico's head. It wasn't easy to resist the tug of that memory when Nico was having a particularly tough day, but Nico learned to resist the draw of good memories almost as well as she learned to shut out the bad.

When she was awake, at least. The nightmares always find her when she sleeps.

But it turns that visiting old memories is nothing compared to the power of creating new ones. It's so much harder to resist going to the boundary stone and spending time with Karolina. Nico gets to share a meal with a friend, she gets to make someone who isn't a tree laugh, she gets to feel warm, inside and out. And she gets to fill the empty shelves in the treasure house of her memory with the thousand variations of Karolina's smile, with Karolina's warm blue eyes, with Karolina's joyous laughter, with her scent which has Nico leaning in closer and closer, with her warmth which makes it harder and harder to walk away at the end of their hour together, with the softness of her skin and the sparks it wakes in Nico's whenever their hands touch.

The fourth time they meet brings something new, or, perhaps, brings a sharper awareness of something that Nico couldn't define before.

Nico goes to Karolina, focused on trying to measure her steps so she doesn't look too eager. She wonders if she's failed when she's standing in front of Karolina and can see the smirk on her face.

"Hi, Nico," Karolina says. Nico's name on Karolina's lips is as soft as Karolina's lips look. Her name is as easy as the way Karolina suddenly throws her arms around her shoulders, pulling her into a hug. Her name is as warm as Karolina's body feels, which is such a gentle, pleasant warmth and not at all like the heat in Nico's face that being so close to Karolina provokes. Nico stands stiff and uncertain, confused by just how good the hug feels, dismayed when Karolina suddenly lets her go and backs away a step. "Sorry. I didn't meant to...I guess you're not a hugger?"

"No." Nico shakes her head. "I mean, I don't know. I haven't had much practice." Nico bites the inside of her lip. "Um, can we try again? I'll do it better this time."

"Of course!" Karolina smiles. "But I have to warn you, I like hugs. I might make you hug a lot."

"Then I really do need to pracrice."

This time it's Nico who steps into Karolina's arms, wrapping her own around Karolina's waist. This time, when Karolina's arms fold around her, it's easier to relax against Karolina's body. Too easy, perhaps, because Nico feels an urge to sink _into_ the other girl's body, to press closer, to lose herself for a time in Karolina.

Instead, Nico breaks off the hug, avoiding eye contact. "You're so tall."

Karolina laughs. "Is that a bad thing?"

"No. I don't know. No, it isn't."

"Well, you were right. That was a much better hug that time. You're a good hugger, Nico."

"Uh huh." Nico keeps her head down, hoping it isn't obvious how red her face is. "Did you, uh, did you bring bread?"

"Maaaybe." Nico looks up to find Karolina grinning smugly. "It depends, though. Did you bring tea?"

"Oh, you're not so willing to share without something in return now? I'm not sure I believe that." Karolina merely raises an eyebrow. She looks ridiculously pleased with herself. It seems fair to Nico: Nico finds herself delighted with her. "Yes, I brought tea."

"In that case, I brought bread." Karolina laughs. "Don't look so grumpy! Maybe I just love the way you make tea. I do, actually. Somehow, you make it taste better."

"Must be magic," Nico croaks, her mouth dry.

"I think it's good company," Karolina says easily, pulling a fresh loaf from her bag. "I think good company makes everything better."

Nico doesn't quite find a response to that, but it turns out to be okay, because Karolina doesn't press her. Instead they talk about their lives in the forest and the city respectively, spending another hour learning more about each other without talking about dangerous things like family or future plans.

It's enough to learn that Karolina loves oranges above other fruits, that she loves green tea more than other varieties, that she loves bright weather, and art, and travelling. Karolina tells Nico about the places that she's visited, places beyond the reach of Nico's scrying magic, places that exist in a world so much larger than Nico ever imagined. For the better part of an hour, Karolina shows Nico the world as she's seen it. In the glow of Karolina's eyes, in the way words trip in their enthusiasm to escape her lips, Nico finds herself thinking for the first time since she was a child that the world is a beautiful place.

* * *

There's a part of Nico that wants to go to the boundary stone every morning after that one, but she's ruthless in quashing that impulse. Nico has work of her own to do. She has to reaffirm old relationships, ensure that deals she's struck at various times over the last ten years are being adhered to, and that the trees she planted are growing the way she asked them.

She gives some thought to the debt she's still owed by Alex and the others, too, an idea taking shape in her mind as a week passes and she spends two more mornings with Karolina. Or rather, the idea takes root in her mind after she hugs Karolina and grows and grows until it overshadows any other form of payment Nico might claim.

When she isn’t meeting Karolina, or thinking about meeting Karolina, or telling the trees about Karolina, Nico spares some thought for Alex's request about the ruins. Particularly since Gert made a reference to prismatic tablets in connection with the ruins. Nico knows less than she’d like about the magic that powers the Shining City and its Guardian, but she knows that it is magic of light, light of many colours, and Nico knows what a prism is.

Her father used one in his experiments. Her father’s workshop was open to her, where her mother’s sanctum was always closed. Nico sometimes wonders what might have been if her father had been a little colder, a little crueler, a little quicker to react to the Guardian’s violence, like her mother was. 

Perhaps Nico would still have a family. Perhaps Nico wouldn’t be alone.

Only...Nico isn’t alone. Not anymore. Like Karolina said, Nico has people now. People, again. At the very least, one person. But Karolina also said she had responsibilities in the city, and Nico has her own responsibility. Who else will get vengeance for the Minorus if not Nico? It has occurred to her, in her lowest moments, that her father might not want Nico to seek revenge. Amy might not, either.

They’re dead, though. They don’t get a say. And Nico knows what her mother would have wanted. Nico knows what _she_ wants. She’s spent too long wanting it to seriously consider changing her mind.

Nico focuses on her own plan to force a confrontation with the Guardian, and within a week, she knows she's ready. Perhaps not for the battle itself, but the plan she's worked on for so long is at a stage where she can potentially launch it at any time. Nico knows how to draw the Guardian out. She knows how to delay the Radiant Legion. She knows how to keep anyone other than the Guardian out of the fight until it’s done. Nico _doesn’t_ know how to ensure the outcome of that fight. But while Alex’s quest _might_ lead Nico to something that _might_ give her an edge, it’s as likely--or more likely--to do nothing of the sort.

Nico has no reason to delay and so many reasons to seek her revenge. Except, of course, that whatever happens in her fight against the Guardian, Nico will never get to see Karolina again. And she wants to see Karolina again. And again. And again and again. Nico knows that sooner or later, it will have to end. Sooner or later, Karolina will see the darkness in Nico, see her for what she really is, and pull away. Their friendship, their...relationship, it can never last.

There's a part of Nico that hopes it will end sooner, because she knows the better she gets to know Karolina, the worse the pain of losing her will be. It's by far the smallest part of her, though. The rest of Nico prays to the Triple Goddess that she won't have to give up Karolina for a long time yet.

* * *

Nico has already come to trust Karolina, but caution is a habit ingrained in her. She gets to her usual vantage point an hour before sunrise and settles in to wait for Karolina, anticipation filling her body with pleasant lightning. Across the space of four meetings, Nico has found a growing hunger to watch Karolina as she walks from the city. It’s the way she moves, her pace quickening as she nears the boundary stone. It’s the way she looks for Nico so eagerly, smiles so widely when she sees her, then sets to laying out a meal for them both like nothing could be more natural. And then there’s the way she greets Nico with greater warmth than the sun when Nico leaves the shadows of the woods behind.

It’s all so new, but the mornings Nico allows herself with Karolina no longer feel like a luxury but an essential part of her existence. Nico doesn’t know how to process the idea that there might be no more of them soon, so she tries to think about the morning to come, wondering if Karolina will wear a dress or trousers today, wondering how she’ll wear her hair, wondering how many more minutes she’ll have to wait to see Karolina’s smile.

But Nico’s pleasant anticipation turns to alarm when, half an hour at least before Karolina will show up, someone comes sneaking through the early morning darkness to the boundary stone. Ideally, she’d use a pool of water or some other reflective surface for scrying magic, but Nico will only need a brief glimpse to understand who has come to her meeting place with Karolina. She’ll risk a headache. Gripping her staff, Nico closes her eyes and whispers, “ _Show me_.”

The darkness behind her eyelids splits, light intruding, hemmed in by the black. The darkness squeezes down, shaping the light into distinct strands of colour. The strands shift and merge, flowing together until Nico can see the image of the one who cam sneaking, stripped of the protection of the last shreds of night.

It’s Alex.

Nico lets the spell go. She opens her eyes, wincing as she experiences an instant of Alex’s face overlaid on the scene in front of her. The image of Alex dissipates, but not without a warning throb at Nico’s temples. Her mouth twists. She isn’t quite sure that Alex is worth the headache.

But he owes her, and Nico knows exactly how she wants that debt to be paid. Besides, she’s curious as to what he and his friends risked their lives for. And, perhaps, Nico’s curious about _friends_. The more she can learn about friendship, Nico reasons, the better she’ll be at it with Karolina.

Her staff twitches in her hands.

“Vengeance has waited ten years. What’s a few more days?” Nico snorts. “What’s a few more weeks?” She pats the bark of the tree behind her. “More time for you to grow. Maybe...maybe I’ve got time to grow some more, too.”

The tree rustles its branches. Nico’s staff doesn’t move.

Nico does. She rises to her feet, leaving her bag and kettle in the care of the tree. She pulls her tattered shawl around her, willing it to spill darkness across her body. Then she takes a firm grip of her staff and walks barefoot and silent to the boundary stone. As she gets closer, she can see the dim shape that is Alex sitting in shadow at the base of the stone. She senses rather than sees how his head turns, methodically scanning the tree line, looking for her. In the darkness, cloaked in her midnight-dyed dress and shawl, Nico avoids his gaze until she’s almost on top of him.

“Alex.” He flinches, and Nico can’t help a smirk. “What are you doing here?”

“Ha! Okay, I suppose I should have known better than to think I’d spot The One Who Walks In Darkness coming.”

“Yes.” Nico lowers herself to the ground, putting her back to the stone. “I thought your father had you locked in the city.” She can’t help the ice that creeps into her voice. “Your father, the Commander of the Radiant Guard.”

“Ah. Karolina told you that? Well, remember when I told you there were other ways into the city?” Alex shuffles around to face her. The sun is still absent from the sky, but the magic in the Radiant City’s walls has begun to wake up, has begun to glow. The Radiant Gate itself is always awash in light and enough of it reaches them to stain the darkness, to make the shapes of their faces discernible. Alex is wearing a smile. “I needed to see you. Wanted...to see you. So I used one of the secret ways to sneak out. Now. Did you like the tea and cake?”

“I...did.” Nico narrows her eyes. “But I asked you a question. About your father.”

“You didn’t.” He chuckles. “But I’ll answer it anyway. Yeah, my father is the Great Prism of the Radiant Guard. My mother is the city’s chief justice. Gert’s parents--who raised Molly, too--are the leading experts in biomantic arts. You know, any magic that touches on living beings: animals, plants or people. Chase’s father is the greatest artificer in the history of the Shining City. His mother’s expertise lies more in magic theory and history. And the six of them form the Ruling Council of the Shining City.” Alex spreads his hands. “They’re our parents. We didn’t choose that. But we don’t need to choose to follow them if they’re doing things we don’t agree with. And they are doing things I _really_ don’t agree with. When I tell you about it, I know you’ll want to help--”

Pressure begins to build in Nico’s skull. She tries to keep her discomfort from affecting her voice or her expression. “Did you bring food?”

His hands drop, limp, into his lap. “...no?”

“Hmm."

“Do you...want more food? Is that what you mean? If that’s the other debt I owe you--”

“No. What it means is, you don’t get any tea later. And what I want from you is cloth. I want silk. I want thread and I want needles. I want scissors. I want…” Nico swallows, then grits her teeth. “Soap. _Nice_ -smelling soap.” She can _feel_ the intensity of his eyes on her. She can feel his mind worrying at her words, hunting for details, hunting for secrets. Nico snaps, “Is that worth more than you and your friends' lives to you, when I held them in my palm?”

“No! I was just...surprised. I didn’t think...well. If that’s what you want,” he grins, “I’ll deliver. I came through for you once already, didn’t I?”

“Karolina did. I want you or one of the others to deliver this time.”

His head rocks back. “Karolina only came through because I told her...ah, huh. We’re getting sidetracked. I was telling you about--”

“Karolina’s parents.”

“No. No, I wasn’t,” Alex says, coldly. “I was telling you about--”

“Tell me about them. Aren’t they on the council?”

“Why…?” He pauses, and she can feel his mind at work again, moving frantically through thought processes Nico can’t begin to fathom. “Huh. Alright. Karolina’s parents are actors, performers. Leslie, Karolina’s mother, is a decent illusionist, too. But when they took up residence in the Shining City five years ago, they formed a guild of performers. They became very influential, in certain circles. There were...those who wanted to give Leslie a seat on the Ruling Council. But that didn’t work out. Frank left the city last year. Truth be told, he was given a bag full of gems and banished. Leslie is...a recluse these days.”

Nico frowns. “You’re being evasive.”

“Yeah, I am. Because a lot of it is personal to Karolina. If you want to know, ask her. She never talks about it, though.”

That gives Nico pause. “Oh. Okay.”

“As I was say--”

“How did...why are you all friends? You and the others and Karolina?”

"Curious today, huh?" His lips press together. “I grew up with the others. Our parents have been close for a long time. Karolina’s mother is from the Shining City originally, too. She and Frank and Karolina travelled a lot, but we’ve all known each other since we were kids. And the last five years, Karolina has basically been one of us. Any other questions? Or can we get to the things I need to tell you? I don’t have much time before I need to get back.”

“Yes, I have more questions. I…” Nico bites the inside of her lip. “Tell me about the Guardian.”

Alex is silent for even longer this time. The first finger-width of sun on the horizon shows Nico an expressionless face.

“What?” Nico asks at last. “Why are you staring at me?”

“The Guardian has a _lot_ to do with what I want to tell you. But you were asking about Karolina, then suddenly you...ah, you switched to the Guardian. Why?”

Nico looks away. “You’re looking for prismatic tablets. In the ruins in the Old Forest. Gert said they were the ruins of the first Shining City. The Guardian...he’s my enemy. And he’s wrapped up in all of this, isn’t he? So tell me about him.”

“Tell you about...him. Okay.” Alex slowly nods. He flashes her another grin. “Okay, then. I can do that. If I do that, do I get tea?”

“No.” Nico snorts, then offers Alex a small smile of her own. “Maybe.”

Alex’s grin widens. “Good enough. Here we go, then.”

* * *

For as long as anyone can remember, the Guardian of the Shining City was a man called Jonah. It isn’t clear if the title was one he chose or one he inherited, but what was clear was that he drew directly from the light of the crystal core at the heart of the Shining City. The power of his magic was immeasurable, and it was thought that it kept him ageless. He was pledged to use his power to defend the city from external threats, but it was clear to anyone who knew anything about the inner workings of the Shining City that such limits on the Guardian existed in name only.

The Shining City had never had a king, and would never tolerate a king. But Jonah was its king in all but name, and his rule was as absolute as the power of the crystal core. Of course, he was cunning enough not to expose himself to the majority of the people. Instead, he shaped the Ruling Council to serve his interests and see to the daily operations of the city. In theory, the Ruling Council is elected by the people and the Guardian has no part in the process. In practice, Jonah’s handpicked candidates always win. The Ruling Council controls the Shining City, and Jonah controls the Ruling Council and everyone on it.

Or at least, he _did_. There are theories about how the council began to slip through Jonah’s grasp, the simplest of which is that the years that could not touch his body still left their mark on his mind. Whether through a diminution of his cunning or an increase in his arrogance, Jonah gave more power and responsibilities to the council, sacrificing his own control for freedom he used in pursuit of largely unknown ends.

The Ruling Council took the reins of power and began to shape the policies of the city to their own desires, building their own wealth and power and influence in the process. When the next elections came, for the first time in a long time, one of Jonah’s preferred candidates lost to an incumbent. Jonah suddenly saw the danger he’d blinded himself to: he could not thwart the elections and the council directly without exposing himself to the populace. If he did that, the power structure that had been of benefit to him for so long would collapse. Jonah had the power to oppose the entire Radiant Legion, but to what end? To rule over the rubble that was left by a civil war or revolution?

Still, to let the council grow more powerful might see them find a way to wrest his control of the crystal core from him. And then Jonah’s long life would be at an end. That was something he could not allow.

So began a period of slow and subtle war as the council sought to impose their wills and Jonah sought to prevent them. It was a war as vicious as it was silent. And it was a war that, after a few years, came to a stalemate. Without control of the crystal core, the council could not grow the walls of the city to meet their desire for expansion. Without control of the core, the council could not control the Radiant Gate. The ultimate say of who could enter and leave the city would always be the Guardian’s. Without the crystal core, the council could not afford to push Jonah too far, because his control of it meant he could demolish the city, if he so willed.

But Jonah could not rid himself of the current council. They were too popular with the people, had become too essential to the smooth running of the city and the secret structures hidden just beneath the surface of society. Jonah could no longer rely on anyone but himself and he became more isolated and more paranoid.

So it went, until ten years ago, when the balance of power began to tip in the council’s favour. The council had invited a renowned family of witches to join the Shining City, offering to expand the council to offer wife and husband seats on it. Rumour has it that the council thought these witches might hold the key to breaking the Guardian’s hold on the crystal core. Whether true or not, ten years ago, the witches came with their two little girls and found the Guardian waiting for them.

Some say he slew the whole family. Some say that he let one little girl live--

* * *

“Stop,” Nico snarls, her hands fists in her lap.

Alex stops speaking. He watches her carefully. When Nico does nothing more than struggle to breathe for a few seconds, he says, “I guess that confirms the version of the story I always thought was true. It could hardly be a coincidence that the Witch of the Woods was first spotted a year after--”

“It’s not a story! Not to me.”

“Yeah, I get that.” Alex sighs. “It must have been awful. But there are a lot more lives at stake. More families in danger, because of my parents and the hold they have over the Guardian. I need your help, Witch of the Woods. And like I said, I figure you’ve got good reasons to want to help me.”

He talks about her family being murdered like it happened so long ago it’s just an unpleasant memory to be brushed aside. For Nico, ten years ago is no more distant than yesterday’s nightmares.

Pain pulses in her temples. It takes an effort not to reach for her staff, not to _show_ him that she has more than reasons to act, she has a plan and she has the will to enact it. “What...hold? You said there was a stalemate. My...it didn’t end ten years ago.”

Alex shakes his head. “No. Not the way any of our parents wanted. But when Jonah killed your family--”

“ _Murdered_ them,” Nico growls. “He is a _murderer_.”

“He...yeah.” Alex licks his lips. Speaking more softly, he says, “You’re right. And a lot of people in the city thought so, too. Jonah’s popularity, the trust people had in him, was...damaged. And the council, my parents, _our_ parents used that to push him into a corner. And now...well, things have changed quite a bit. The Guardian is...is more or less at the mercy of the council. And that would be a good thing, only--”

“I don’t care. I don’t care about your council. I want the Guardian. That’s all.”

Alex slowly shakes his head. “My parents want to annex the territory around the Shining City. The Radiant Legion is getting ready to march. There’s going to be war, Witch of the Woods. And the Old Forest won’t be spared. Because the council want to expand the city. They’ll use their hold over the Guardian, and the Guardian’s relationship to the crystal core to make the Legion unstoppable and to expand the walls, expand the whole city over a vast new area. The Old Forest is going to die. Territories that have been independent for centuries are going to be conquered. A lot more children will lose their parents if we don’t find a way to break the council’s grip on the Guardian. That’s why we… _I_ need you to--”

Nico is suddenly on her feet. “You want me to _help_ the Guardian?”

“I want you to help _everyone_. I want you to help _me_. Trust me, if you can help me get what I need, this is all going to work out for the best!”

“You don’t know a thing about me, Alex.” Nico flexes her hands. “You don’t know my _story_. You do not know what’s best for me!”

“I think I know enough. And I think you need me as much as I--”

“Nico! Hey, sorry I’m…” Karolina rushes around the side of the stone, a smile more radiant than the Radiant Gate on her lips. It fades when she sees that Nico isn’t alone. “Oh...Alex? What…?”

He raises an eyebrow, looking back and forth between Nico and Karolina. “Nico? That’s your name? Nico. Huh. I like it.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you weren’t alone!” Karolina winces, her blue eyes filling with worry. “I...wait, are you okay?”

Nico closes her eyes and breathes. Pain sends its roots questing for the edges of her skull. “I’m leaving.”

“Not yet,” Alex snaps. “We haven’t--”

“You don’t get to decide that,” Karolina says. Nico opens her eyes. Karolina is standing between her and Alex, facing him down. “I don’t know what’s happening here, Alex, but Nico should be allowed to make her own choices. Don’t you think?”

Nico's too surprised to say anything, but she finds herself stepping forward to stand at Karolina's side.

“ _Nico_ should, huh?” Alex’s jaw flexes as he looks at them in turn, Nico's choice of where to stand clearly not lost on him. “You know what’s at stake, Karolina. And you’ve known _her_ for five minutes. You need to let me handle--”

“I’ve known Nico for five years.” Nico stiffens. Karolina shoots her an apologetic look. “I mean, I haven’t known you the whole time, and you wouldn’t remember, but we _met_ five years--”

“You were in a white carriage,” Nico whispers. She clears her throat. “You wore a white dress. You gave me cake. You...you were kind.”

“Oh.” Karolina stares at her. Her cheeks redden, but she smiles. “That’s why you asked if I was...oh. You remembered.”

“I...thought you’d forgotten.” It’s dizzying to realise that all this time, Karolina has held onto her memories of their first meeting as tightly as Nico has. Nico feels another flood of warmth suffuse her, briefly washing away the pain in her head. “I thought you’d forgotten me.”

“How could anyone ever forget meeting you, Nico?” Karolina smiles. “I always hoped we’d meet another time. I used to watch the forest as much as the road, hoping I’d see you again.”

Nico ducks her head, unable to fight the smile that parts her lips.

"So..." Alex clears his throat. "You've...bonded. With the Witch of the Woods. Interesting choice."

"Alex, Nico is--"

"People have noticed, Karolina. All the time you've been spending outside in the early mornings? People have noticed. Molly tells me Eiffel's been asking questions about you." Karolina winces. She shifts from one foot to another, her hands twisting nervously together. "It seems like I'm the one looking out for you, instead of you. It seems like you've forgotten the mess you're in, because you're too busy--"

"Don't talk to her like that," Nico says coldly. She can feel pain clawing behind her eyes, but it's nothing to the fury building in her chest.

"Why not?" Alex snorts. "I'm trying to help her! I'm trying to help _everyone_ , and it's about time people listened to--"

"I could burn your tongue out," Nico says, tilting her head and making her face blank. "If that's easier for you than shutting up?"

"Nico!" Karolina gasps. "Alex is...Alex is right. He is trying to help. And I owe him. And I'm sure you wouldn't actually try to hurt him. We're all friends here. Okay?"

Nico continues to stare at Alex.

Alex sighs, running a hand through his hair. "Yeah. We're all friends here. And I wasn't being a good one. I let my frustrations get the better of me." He nods at Nico, then at Karolina. "I apologise."

"Apology accepted!" Karolina looks at Nico, smiling a little too eagerly. "Okay, Nico?"

Nico shrugs. "Fine."

"Do you...want to apologise for threatening Alex?"

"No." Nico scowls up at Karolina, who stares at her with pleading eyes. "Pff, fine! Sorry I threatened to burn out your tongue, Alex."

"Yeah...please don't do that ever?" Karolina turns the full power of her bright blue eyes on Alex. He throws up his hands. "Okay, apology accepted!"

"Good," Karolina says firmly. "Let's put it behind us and have breakfast. I've got enough for three."

While Karolina starts unloading her bag, Alex and Nico exchange a look. Somehow, they smile at each other. Nico thinks it's for Karolina's sake more than anything else, but it still feels...good. It feels good to accept Alex as a friend and be accepted by him, even if it doesn't give her quite the same thrill she felt when she and Karolina became friends.

Then again, nothing thrills Nico like Karolina does. As soon as _that_ thought crosses her mind, Nico has to look away, aware of how hot her face suddenly is.

"I won't join you," Alex says softly, and to Nico's immense relief. "I need to get back before I'm missed. But Nico, I hope you won't mind if I come back tomorrow. I'll settle that other debt, and we can finish our conversation."

Nico doesn't much like the sound of the last part, but a quick glance at Karolina--wearing a beautifully embroidered peach dress and her hair up in a mass of golden curls--reminds her why she wants dressmaking supplies. "Okay."

"Good." Alex hesitates. "Karolina...I think you'd better not meet us tomorrow."

Karolina pauses in the act of laying out food on a blanket. "Oh?"

"Why?" Nico says, trying to keep the spike of anger she feels out of her voice.

"Because we don't want to risk anyone who's curious about how Karolina's been spending her mornings stumbling onto our meeting the Witch of the Woods. We all need to be careful here, for Nico's sake as much as ours."

Karolina sighs. "You're right. Sorry, Nico. We can get together another day."

Nico frowns, but eventually she nods.

"Good," Alex says. He considers Karolina, his lips pursed. "Be _careful_ , Karolina. There's a lot at stake here. For all of us."

Karolina flushes. "I know! I...I know."

"Alright. See you tomorrow, Nico!" Alex flashes her a grin before he jogs away, slipping quietly around the far side of the boundary stone and out of sight.

Nico frowns, but Karolina is still busy and she has tea to make, so Nico decides to hold off on asking any of the questions buzzing through her skull. Instead, with the grudging help of her staff, she summons her bag and her kettle from where she left them in the woods and boils water for them both.

It doesn't take a lot of magic, but after her scrying earlier, any magic proves to be too much. By the time she's sitting with her back to the boundary stone--Karolina beside her, their shoulders almost touching--Nico's head is full of fog and razors. She clutches her cup of tea, trying not to shiver, and ignores the food she has no appetite for.

"What's wrong?" Karolina asks after a stretch of silence longer than usual even for Nico.

It's a lesson Nico learned long ago, not to show weakness, ever. Showing weakness invites predators. Showing weakness invites death. But before she can really consider why, Nico mumbles, "Sore head."

"Oh. Maybe I can help. Put down your cup."

"Huh?" Nico tries to squint at Karolina, to read her face, but she just winces in pain and closes her eyes. "Ow. I guess we can try."

Nico puts her cup down, out of the way. At Karolina's prompting she turns so her back is facing Karolina, her eyes still squeezed shut. She's about to ask what's next when Karolina's fingers touch both of her temples. Karolina applies pressure, rubbing circles into Nico's skin. At first, it only cause the pain to increase, but then...then warmth floods through Nico's skull, forcing the pain back. Karolina's hands flow over her head, squeezing and rubbing, working their way down to Nico's neck, her shoulders, her back. Warmth spreads through Nico wherever Karolina touches, and Nico groans as her muscles loosen.

"Goddess, that's incredible!" Nico gasps.

She tries to open her eyes, tries to turn and offer Karolina a smile, a thank you, _something_ , but her eyes won't open and her muscles won't work and there's a deeper darkness beckoning Nico. She answers its call.

* * *

Nico wakes up feeling warm. She blinks, trying to shake off the fuzziness of sleep but reluctant to move. It takes a moment for her memories to line up before she realises where she is and why she isn't cold for once. Nico fell asleep, and...Nico opens her eyes fully. She's somehow become nestled into Karolina's side. Karolina has an arm around her shoulders. _Nico_ has her arm around Karolina's waist.

"Hey, sleepyhead." Whether it's the change in her breathing or the tension in her body, Nico waking up doesn't go missed. Nico looks up and finds Karolina gazing at her, a gentle smile on her lips. 'Gentle' isn't quite the right word for the look on her face, but it's close to it. And Karolina's face is very close to Nico's. "Feel better? Do you want to sleep some more?"

Nico doesn't trust her mouth, so she nods, then shakes her head. Karolina gives no sign of wanting to let her go, though, so Nico decides to lower her head again, resting it on Karolina's chest. Karolina makes a soft sound, almost a sigh, but it isn't a disappointed sound. The way her grip tightens briefly on Nico's shoulder suggests that she's pleased that Nico wants to keep using her body like a pillow.

Nico isn't sure what she wants, but she knows she won't be able to figure it out with Karolina looking at her and this seems like a good way of avoiding her eyes for a while. It's comfortable, too. Karolina is warm and soft and she smells so good and...Nico suddenly thinks that she could happily stay right here for as long as Karolina let her.

"You know I haven't felt this relaxed since...well, it feels like a really long time." Karolina shifts slightly, keeping a firm grip on Nico as she finds a more comfortable position. She's quiet for a while, but Nico has her head against Karolina's chest and she can tell by her breathing that Karolina is still awake. "I suppose it must be difficult for you, getting enough sleep in a place full of things that would happily kill you and eat you."

Nico shifts her shoulders. She hopes that Karolina can pick up on the shrug. She hopes Karolina doesn't realise that the shrug is an excuse to snuggle in closer. "It can be. It's not as bad as all that. I've lived there for ten years."

"That's...so long. It must have been lonely." Nico risks squeezing Karolina's waist. She doesn't protest. Instead, Karolina begins to run her thumb in soothing circles across Nico's shoulder. It feels like all the tensions that have grown wild inside her for ten years are being pruned away by Karolina's touch. "I think it's amazing that you survived so long. Thrived, even. You're amazing, Nico."

Nico smiles. "Do you...how much do you remember about the first time we met?"

Karolina's hand stills for a moment, before resuming its gentle work. "All of it."

"Even..."

"You asking me to come live in the Old Forest with you?"

"Um..." Nico is absurdly grateful that Karolina can't see her face. "That part, yeah."

"I've thought about that a _lot_ since that day. Especially the last couple of years. Sometimes I wonder if I made a mistake, saying no. Sometimes I just wonder how _big_ of a mistake I made."

"Why...did you say no?" Nico quickly looks up. "Not that there weren't a lot of reasons. It was stupid to ask."

"You were sweet. You're sweet, Nico." Karolina chuckles. "But I was thirteen, so, uh...I wasn't going to run off with a strange witch to live in a magic forest full of monsters. Even if the witch was sweet and shy and clever and funny and brave. I...would never have done anything to hurt my parents back then. I couldn't even imagine it. I would never have left them."

"Oh." Nico chews the inside of her lip, debating. Finally she says, "Alex told me your father left."

Karolina sighs. "They both did. The man I _called_ my father, he left about a year ago. Right after my, ah, my birth father...died."

"Alex didn't mention that."

"He didn't? It's not exactly a secret. Everyone in the city knows what happened. He, I mean, my birth father--"

"You don't have to tell me. if you don't want to."

Karolina squeezes her shoulder again. "I...he was sick. I think he'd been sick for a long time. In the end, it was too much for him. He...died. I barely knew him as anything other than a stranger, and then I found out he was my father, he and my mother loved each other still, and then...then he--"

"I'm...sorry."

"It's okay."

"No," Nico says fiercely, "it isn't okay."

"You're right. It isn't." Karolina coughs. "I, uh, the way it all happened...I'm not okay with any of it, Nico."

"You shouldn't have to be."

"I don't think my birth father was a good man. I'm not sure either of my fathers were good men. But they were still...one raised me, and I wouldn't exist without the other. They were family. And now they're gone. It'd be...easy, if I could feel just one way about them, even if it was all bad. But I can't. Everything's tangled and I don't know what to feel most of the time. The only time I ever feel completely okay is..."

She doesn't finish the thought, but she squeezes Nico's shoulder again. Nico burrows in closer to Karolina's side. "Yeah. I know. My sister...sometimes I hated her? She was always so good at everything. Always better than me." Nico quickly swipes at her eyes before hesitantly returning her arm to Karolina's waist. Nico forces herself to whisper, "I never stopped loving her, even when I hated her. And now she isn't there anymore and I don't know if she knew I loved her or thought I hated her at the end."

"She knew," Karolina says firmly. "She knew you loved her. She knows, Nico. There's a piece of her that can never die, and that piece of her knows you've always loved her."

Nico nods. She waits a long time, her heart thumping against her ribs and Karolina's side. She waits until she trusts her voice again. "Is it bad that I wish you had come with me that day? I wish I'd had five years of you already."

"No, it isn't bad. But I think we've come pretty far in the time we've had. I'm grateful for that." Karolina murmurs. She chuckles. "Although, I don't think I'd have survived for long in the Old Forest. I wouldn't have lasted five days, let alone five years."

"You would've been okay. You'd be okay. _You_ could stay as long as you wanted." Nico looks up, meeting Karolina's eye. "I'd look out for you. I wouldn't let anything bad happen to you." She hesitates. “I-I won't. Ever.”

Karolina stares at her, her lips slightly parted, her eyes travelling over Nico's face. Nico finds her mouth drying out. She swallows and licks her lips, and she doesn't miss the way Karolina's eyes follow the movement of her tongue.

Nico buries her head in Karolina’s chest again. It doesn’t feel as safe as it did a moment ago, not when Nico is aware of how her heart is thundering and how she’s no longer warm but hot. Nico almost wants to pull away, but that thought is drowned out by the overwhelming need to be close to Karolina, to get closer still, to become entwined in Karolina's limbs, flush with her body, to meet her lips with Nico's own.

It's strange. It's terrible. It's wonderful. It's something Nico doesn't understand, a desire for a moment that Nico knows she will be inadequate to should she ever fully realise it. The want of it burns inside her and the dread of it makes her shiver.

“I won’t let anything bad happen to you either, Nico.” Karolina’s words are so soft and Nico's heart is so loud that she barely hears them. “I promise.”

And Nico finds that she believes her. She finds her heart slowing, her terror receding. She finds her desire in no way lessened, just less overwhelming. Perhaps because it doesn't feel like a secret waiting to become a tragedy anymore, not when Karolina is holding her, and her thumb is still soothing her. Not when they've made promises to each other, to protect each other.

Nico squeezes Karolina's waist again, enjoying the little puff of air Karolina expels. It's not quite a laugh, but it's easy to imagine Karolina's smile. Nico burrows into Karolina's side and pictures her smile and falls asleep before she even knows that it's what she needs and what she wants. Nico sleeps for long enough for nightmares to seek her out and trample her beneath their hooves. But for the first time in ten years, in the shelter of Karolina's body, the nightmares don't find her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I say four parts? I clearly meant five! And this time, I mean it! Two more chapters and we're out. And since Karolina and Nico are getting pretty comfortable with each other, clearly nothing can go wrong from here! :D
> 
> Ahem.
> 
> Thanks very much for reading, folks! Please do leave any thoughts you might have in a comment. Comments nourish and sustain writers like nothing else.


	4. The Guardian

It's the rumbling of a cart that wakens Nico eventually. The sun is much higher in the sky than it should be and Nico knows she has to go. Softly and sleepily and with no desire to do so, she takes her leave of Karolina.

"Bye," Karolina says, pulling her into another hug. Nico presses her face to Karolina's chest and breathes her in, trying to define the scent of Karolina's skin under the jasmine of her perfume. Karolina pulls away before Nico can work it out, smiling down at her. "Thank you for the tea."

"That's okay." Nico takes one last breath, then reluctantly takes a step back. "Thank you for..." Nico swallows. "Everything."

Karolina's answering grin is a new sun rising. "See you soon, Nico."

Nico is left to wonder, as she trudges back to the gloomy embrace of the Old Forest, whether Karolina's body, or Karolina's smile, or the sound of Nico's name on Karolina's lips is the most comforting thing she's ever known.

* * *

The next day, Nico finds Alex waiting for her at the edge of the Old Forest, a large bundle in his arms.

"Whoah! " He jumps when Nico steps out of a patch of darkness beside him. "I don't suppose you'll stop doing that if I ask nicely?"

"Do you ever ask nicely for anything?"

"Of course I--" He snorts and offers her the bundle. "I brought what you asked for. Should I ask what you _want_ it for?"

Nico gestures at her torn and ragged dress. "Do you need to?"

"I guess not." Alex takes a pouch from his belt and tosses it to her. "Here. Soap. Nice-smelling soap."

Nico tucks her new cloth under her arm and opens the drawstring of the pouch with her teeth. Nico sniffs, inhaling the scent of orange blossom. Nico thinks about the next time she'll see Karolina. She's pierced by a memory of Karolina licking droplets of orange juice from her skin. Nico tries to hide her blush behind the pouch.

Alex seems to sense it anyway. "You need nice soap in the Old Forest? It seems like it'd be bad for camouflage."

"I want it." Nico lowers the pouch. She glares defiantly at Alex. "That's all."

"Uh huh." Alex purses his lips. "So it has nothing to do with wanting to impress...anyone?"

"N-No." Nico feels cold down her spine and a fresh wave of heat wash over her face. "Why would I...w-who, even...? No. Um, so, you and your friends' debts are cleared."

Alex nods. His eyes bore into her, working past defenses that feel much too flimsy suddenly. Slowly he smiles. "I see. Well, does that mean I can incur another?"

"You want me to help you find your prismatic tablets."

"I do."

"Why?"

"I want them." He smirks. "That's all."

"Okay. No deal."

It feels petty, but Nico still enjoys it when Alex' jaw drops. " _What_?" 

Nico waves the pouch. "This is soap you bought or stole in your safe little city. You want something powerful, something that's hidden in the ruins in the depths of the Old Forest. I need to understand what it is so I can find it. I need to understand what it is so I'll know if I want it to be found."

"If you knew my mom, you'd realise that stealing that soap wasn't safe," Alex mutters. He frowns, rubbing his chin. "Okay. I don't know for sure what the tablets contain. _We_ don't know for sure, that is. But we've been able to piece some things together, things that tell us the tablets could be the key to limiting our parents' ability to do harm. By 'we,' I mean Chase, Gert and I. With a little help from Molly. And a _lot_ of digging into our parents' research."

"Wait, not Karolina?" Nico's eyebrows shoot up.

"No. We couldn't get her help because..." He sighs, then spreads his hands. "In part, we're doing this _for_ Karolina."

Nico can feel her heart speed up. "What do you mean?"

"I mean..." Alex sucks in a breath. "Remember when I told you Karolina's mother was a recluse? It's not by choice. The Ruling Council...our parents, _my_ parents have her secretly imprisoned. She's locked away somewhere even the Guardian can't reach her."

"What? Why?"

"Because...the one who wanted her and Frank--Karolina's father--on the council was Jonah. He was looking to expand the council and put people he thought would be loyal to him in the new seats. He wanted to weaken our parents' grasp on the city, and on him. Instead, he gave them leverage. You see, ah, the Guardian has a...bond with Leslie. So now Leslie is being used to help keep the Guardian in line. And that means that Karolina is--"

"She has people and responsibilities," Nico whispers, her heart clenching. "She told me that, the first morning at the stone. She wants to leave, to travel, but Karolina's _trapped_ in that fucking place because she won't leave her mother! That's why the council won't let her have a magic teacher! She's as much a prisoner as Leslie!"

"Right," Alex says quickly, rubbing his hands together. "She told you all that? That's, ah, that's right, she's a prisoner. And we're all trying to do something about that. About that and every other terrible thing our parents will do with the power they'll have if they get complete control of the crystal core. If we can break the hold the council has over the Guardian, then break the Guardian's connection to the crystal core...we can expose our parents and remove them from office. And we can replace them all, including the Guardian, with a new council. A better one, one free of corruption. So that's why we need those tablets. And Karolina can't know the details, because the threat to her mother...Karolina doesn't want to be in a position where she can betray information to our parents, so we leave her out of the loop on certain things."

Nico shakes her head, struggling to take everything in. Once again, she feels like she's only getting pieces of a much larger picture. Dozens of questions line themselves up from her mind to her mouth but what escapes her lips is this: "How do these tablets help Karolina?"

The way Alex's lip twists, Nico thinks she's made her question one word too long. But he smooths over the cracks in his expression and his voice is even when he answers. "Back when the Old Forest was young and much smaller, there was a city here. And according to legend, that city was the first Shining City. It had its own crystal core, its own Guardian. And it had a library. A library full of works devoted to magic. We don't know how the first Shining City fell," Alex says, and Nico thinks of ancient voices whispering through the leaves, of ancient trees with ancient magic distorting their trunks. "But we _do_ know, from research our parents conducted, that the library contained knowledge on the connection between the Guardian and the crystal core. The prismatic tablets, we believe, describe how the crystal cores were made, how the Guardian became connected to them, and, we hope, exactly how that connection can be severed."

And that would make the Guardian vulnerable. That would allow Nico to take _everything_ from him. Which means that Nico _needs_ to know what information those tablets contain. Because with that knowledge, she'll be able to guarantee her vengeance and...and maybe save Karolina's mother. And if she can do that, maybe she won't have to give up Karolina after all. Maybe Nico can put the darkness behind her at last and maybe Karolina will want to leave this place _with_ Nico...

Nico closes her eyes, but it isn't Karolina's smile that waits for her in the darkness. It's Tina Minoru's imperious face. Nico swallows. "It has something to do with black magic, doesn't it? The way to sever the connection between the Guardian and the crystal core. You don't need to spend long in the Old Forest to know that black magic thrives here."

"Yes. Here where the first Shining City fell. I think there are answers here, and those answers must involve black magic. And I think..." He pauses. Softly, he adds, "I think that's the real reason why our parents wanted your mother to come to the Shining City. And that's why Jonah killed--"

"Okay. Yeah." Nico opens her eyes and meets his. "I'll do it."

Alex lets out a breath. "Thank you. When can we start? I can get the others together tomorrow and--"

"Uh, no!" Nico snorts. "Stumbling around the Old Forest with no idea where you're going will only get you and everyone else killed. And there are a lot ruins. There's too much ground to cover on foot. I'll do some research first." She glances up at the canopy of leaves overhead and groans. "I'm probably going to need to do a lot of favours for a lot of trees to make this work. Even then...the Oldest Trees hate me. It'll take a lot to convince any tree in the older groves to help me, so I'll need at least a week."

"That long?" Alex frowns. "Don't you have any debts you're owed already?"

Nico shrugs. When Alex merely raises an eyebrow and waits, watching her, she snorts again. "I do, yeah. And I need every one of them." Nico touches her staff, shrunk down and tucked into her belt. "A week isn't a long time. Not for something like this."

Her staff twitches. Alex slowly nods.

"Okay. A week. Ah...you know, maybe you should, uh, stay away from Karolina until we've got what we're looking for. It'd be best if she doesn't know what we're doing and--"

"No." Perhaps Nico should explain that Karolina is her friend and that the insight Alex has given her only makes Nico determined to be a better one. Perhaps she should point out that the secrets Alex and the others have been keeping from her have made Karolina so desperate for company that she fought to gain the friendship of the Witch of the Woods. Perhaps she should tell him that much of the truth, but Nico decides she owes him no explanation. "Tell her I'll meet her the day after tomorrow."

"I'm not sure that's wise, Nico."

What Nico can't tell him, won't tell anyone, but is a truth embedded in the marrow of her bones is this: a week without Karolina is too long to imagine. A _life_ without Karolina is as unimaginable to Nico as a life _with_ her is, but for very different reasons. Nico can't afford to breathe too heavily on the ember of hope Alex has given her, the hope that some kind of life might be possible with Karolina. If she breathes too heavily, treads too heavily, moves too quickly now, Nico fears she might extinguish it rather than fan it into a flame. But in the space between hope and fear, in the time she has before she kills the Guardian and perhaps whatever is growing between her and Karolina with it, Nico can still meet Karolina and be her friend.

Nico can't give that up.

"Pass on my message or consider our deal dead."

"Nico, I'm not sure you get the stakes--" Alex begins, but he takes in Nico's expression and raises his hands in defeat. "I'll let her know."

"Good." Nico clutches her bundle close and thinks about everything she needs to do in the next couple of days. "I have to go."

She turns and walks back to her camp, her mind whirling, her footsteps and her breath as soft as she can make them.

* * *

The rest of that day is spent working out how to best approach the problem of finding Alex's library. While she thinks, Nico sits on the forest floor near her sleeping tree, surrounded by a circle of wards. While her mind is busy, her hands work on the materials Alex brought her: a bolt of blue silk and a bolt of white linen with a floral pattern. Nico is indifferent to the colours of the cloth; she'll dye them in the Midnight Grove when her new clothes are done.

Everything she has learned of the art of dressmaking has been the result of scrying or parsing the whispers that pass through the leaves and branches of the trees. Nico knows she can't match the beauty of the clothes that the tailors of the Shining City produce, but she can make clothes that suit her and please her. Of course, among the hopes that Nico tends in the garden she has discovered in her heart, Nico nurtures the hope that Karolina will be pleased too.

Karolina intrudes on Nico's thoughts as she works. Instead of planning how to approach the trees and roots she'll need to convince to help her, Nico ponders everything she's learned from Alex and Karolina both. There are still gaps, she knows, still pieces missing from the story. And it hasn't escaped Nico's notice that, in the span of a day, Alex went from protecting Karolina's privacy to revealing the truth about her mother's imprisonment. It isn't the behaviour of a good friend, Nico thinks, and it makes her more determined than ever to be a good friend to Karolina. Only...the truth is, that Nico might know little of friendship and less of love but she knows enough to know that friendship is only part of what she wants to share with Karolina.

It's hard not to think of Karolina's soft curves, her fragrant skin, her firm muscle. It's hard not to think of her warmth, of her eyes like lakes beneath a summer sun, of all the many ways her lips can make a smile, of the silk of her hair, of the way that humour and kindness and something Nico doesn't dare put a name to thread their way through the graceful cadence of her voice.

It's hard to think of vengeance and hate when Nico thinks of Karolina. It's frightening, how ten years of her life feel like a shadow fading and blurring into an unrecognisable shape in the face of Karolina's light. But the thought of not confronting the Guardian, not making Jonah suffer even a tithe of what Nico has suffered, that makes her heart lurch and sweat form on her brow, her back, her hands which tremble so badly that for a moment she has to abandon needle and silk while she breathes and her body becomes her own again.

Nico looks away from her half-made dress, her eye falling on her staff where it rests against the trunk of her sleeping tree. Nico frowns. "I'll kill him. I will. And I'll free Karolina. She's my friend. She'll understand. She'll be free and happy and she'll understand!"

Her staff remains as still and silent as kindling.

Nico shakes her head. She whispers, "And then where will I go and what will I be? Who will I be when I don't have hate? Why...why would she ever want me, once she's free?"

As sudden as a storm, rage fills her head with thunder and her chest with lightning. Nico's hands become fists, crushing silk and tearing stitches. She bares her teeth, and the trees nearest her shiver and bend back. Nico stares at the nothing in front of her for a long, long time, willing it to take some kind of shape.

It never does.

And then, in the eye of the storm of her fury, she finds the answer she sought to the problem of finding Alex's lost library. When she sees the neatness of it, Nico laughs. She laughs until she's emptied of anger and her eyes are full of tears. When her eyes are empty, she breathes until her head is empty. When her head is empty, she fills her hands with work and finishes her dress.

* * *

Nico has made a home in the Old Forest, and there are places in the Old Forest where Nico is welcome. But there are places in the Old Forest where Nico doesn't go. There are places where she isn't welcome, where the Oldest Trees dwell. In the oldest parts of the forest, magic from spells realised and unresolved has been crushed down beneath a weight of time, filtered light and soil into something that can't be studied and which at best might kill anyone whose foot sinks into the loam and disturbs the magic beneath.

At worst...Nico has been close enough to the ancient places to see what it looks like when a beast like a wyvern touches the ancient magic and doesn't die. What had become of the still breathing mess that had been a wyvern was enough to crowd her usual nightmares out of her head for a week.

The Oldest Trees in the oldest places of the Old Forest tap into that compressed jumble of black magic, somehow drawing nourishment from it through their roots and into their twisted bodies. Nico knows no tricks to help her deal with the Oldest Trees. When she draws near them, she knows only their hate. It's the the slow, squeezing hate of an old tree that remembers people and their flames and axes from long ago, and remembers the millennia-long bliss of their absence.

Nico's presence in the Old Forest is an affront to the Oldest Trees, an affront that she can never amend by trade or favour. Nico keeps her distance instead, as best she can from trees whose roots run deep and wide throughout the Old Forest. Nico keeps her distance, until the day after she finishes her dress and dyes it the colour of a starless, moonless night in the Midnight Grove.

With the aid of as much sunlight as ever makes it through the canopy of the Old Forest, wearing her old dress and manticore venom scent, clutching her staff and whispering prayers to the Triple Goddess, Nico visits the Youngest Oldest Tree. Perhaps it was an oak, perhaps a beech, perhaps a willow. Now it is something else, something that knows of Nico's coming long before she sees its deformed trunk, something that opens a way for her through its servant trees like the jaws of a hungry wraith. 

Nico walks into the presence of the Youngest Oldest Tree and stops when she is deep in danger and just short of ruin. The earth beneath her feet is still firm, the lesser trees around her docile, but Nico knows she is inches and moments from death or worse than death. A knot in the trunk twitches and blinks at Nico like an eye. Nico knows that it isn't, that trees have no need for sight when they have so many other senses, but it's hard not to shudder and shrink before the blind gaze of the Youngest Oldest Tree.

Nico is careful when she raises her staff. She is careful when she breathes, careful when she speaks. "I've come to offer the only thing I have which you might value. I have come to ask...a favour."

There are no sounds near the Youngest Oldest Tree, just the shallow scrape of Nico's breath, just the slithering laughter two branches make when they slide across each other. The trunk shivers and twists, and a gob of sap, thick and black and acrid, hisses through the air to land beside Nico's right boot. Fragments of voices leak out into the air, uttering pieces of spells any one of which could break Nico if they were spoken in their totality.

Nico lets the voices wither and fade back into memory.

"We both know you place no value on my life. We both know how easily you could kill me." Nico narrows her eyes. Carefully, she steps forward, nearer to a place where the earth is soft and dense magic seeps through the surface. Nico carefully aligns the tip of her staff, pointing it at the magic under the earth. "Know this: if I must, I'll make my ending one that will keep me present here for centuries to come, whether it leaves me a boneless puddle or worse. Is that what you want? Do you want me here that long? I smell bad now, but that'll only get worse as the decades go by."

The Youngest Oldest Tree becomes still. The knot that is not an eye slowly blinks at her.

Nico doesn't relax, not yet. "I need to find a lost place, a place that became lost within your memory. A library, a place where silent words were kept. The favour I need is for you to search through the maze of your roots and find it." Nico licks her lips. Her voice croaking she says, "In return, I offer my absence. Before the moon is full, I will leave the Old Forest and never return. I swear it by the Triple Goddess. I know you hate me, but _you_ know I keep my word."

The Youngest Oldest Tree doesn't move. Not above the ground, at least. But Nico can feel power flowing through its roots, power flowing out beneath her and spreading through the Old Forest. To Nico, the silent questing takes a long time, but for a tree, the decision is made quickly.

A branch slithers down from the canopy, mottled black and brown and bearing gray leaves. It lowers itself until it is almost touching the top of Nico's staff. Carefully, Nico shifts, her staff meeting the tip of the branch. She knows, without knowing how she knows, that the deal has been struck. And she knows, without knowing how it knows, that the Youngest Oldest Tree can find the library and will tell her when it has.

Nico inclines her head to the tree. Its knot blinks one last time, and then Nico turns and leaves as quickly as she can without breaking into a run.

* * *

Nico doesn't expect to sleep that night, but, for a few hours, she does. Sleep brings nightmares, but it also puts a barrier between Nico and her visit to the Youngest Oldest Tree. It makes it easier for her to put aside Karolina's blue blanket and climb down from her sleeping tree. It makes it easier to walk in near total darkness to the river, clutching her new dress and the soap that will lend her skin the savour of orange blossom.

It makes it possible to smile, when she's bathed and dressed and her hair is brushed, because, by that point, Nico isn't thinking about how she'll have to quit the Old Forest in a couple of weeks, of how she'll have to bring the Guardian to battle before then or what the consequences of that battle might be, or even of how she'll have to trust the Youngest Oldest Tree when she goes looking for the prismatic tablets. No, by that point Nico is only thinking about how Karolina will react when she sees Nico's new dress. She's thinking about hugging Karolina, so that Karolina can smell Nico's new scent.

Humming softly, Nico walks to the edge of the forest. She doesn't break stride and barely pauses in her humming when a wraith tries to jump her. She merely sings out a spell that surrounds it in ice and skips away, leaving it for some other predator to finish.

* * *

Nico waits at the edge of the treeline, but she doesn't lean on a tree this time. She doesn't want any bark or moss on her new dress. It may not be a piece of tailoring to the standards of the craftspeople of the Shining City, but it's the nicest dress that Nico has ever made. In time it will likely become worn and tattered, but now it is sleek and warm and black and beautiful.

And now is all Nico cares about. At least, right now it is. Nico knows that the future is coming for her, that the promises and deals she's made are all soon to be tested, that everything is about to change or end. But right now...right now, Nico is going to have breakfast with her friend.

Nico is unable to prevent a smile from spreading across her face. She squints up at the sky, silently urging on the dawn, and tries not to fidget with the skirt of her dress. The sun has barely begun to rise when Nico sees Karolina jogging down the road from the Radiant Gate, her hair hanging down the side of her face in a braid. She's wearing a sleeveless white tunic embroidered with roses and pale blue trousers.

Nico grins. It seems she isn't the only one who's been feeling impatient.

Before she's consciously registered the impulse, Nico abandons the treeline and strides quickly towards the stone. She waves as soon as Karolina spots her and Karolina laughs and waves back, increasing her pace.

They meet before they reach the shelter of the boundary stone, but Nico is too busy being engulfed in a hug to care. Their bodies meet more forcefully than either of them intended, and they stumble and clutch at each other to maintain their balance. Karolina laughs breathlessly, her face flushed and glowing with happiness. Nico takes her in for a moment, then presses close, burying her face in Karolina's chest. She listens as Karolina's laughter fades, smiles as Karolina's arms tighten around her, and finds the last of her worries retreating to the undergrowth of her mind as she breathes in Karolina's scent.

Nico doesn't dare to even think the word that being in Karolina's arms evokes. She just breathes softly, filling her lungs with jasmine and her memories with the deeper, more elusive scent that is purely Karolina's. When Nico finally pulls away, she doesn't think she imagines Karolina's brief reluctance to end their embrace. When Nico looks up, she knows she isn't imagining that Karolina's face is redder than it should be since she's had time to recover from her run.

"You smell nice," Karolina murmurs. Her cheeks become even redder. "I mean, nicer than usual! I mean, you, uh...and is that a new dress?"

"Yeah." Nico takes a step back, grinning when Karolina's eyes travel over her body. "Do you like it?"

"I do..." Karolina nods, her eyes wide. She fiddles with the end of her braid, smiling almost shyly. "It's...very black. It's very you."

Nico snorts. "You can't say that! You don't know me."

"Not as well as I'd like," Karolina admits, her smile growing in confidence and luminosity. "Yet. But I still think it suits you. It's beautiful." Karolina touches a finger to the shoulder of Nico's dress, then brushes along the silk, towards Nico's throat. She pauses for what feels like a very long time with the pad of her finger against Nico's bare collarbone. Her eyes meet Nico's. "So beautiful..."

Nico swallows. She has never been more conscious of her lack of height than now, looking up at Karolina, knowing that her lips are too far above her.

Karolina blinks, then she pulls her hand away, transferring it to the end of her braid. "I haven't even said hello!" Karolina waves again, making Nico chuckle. "Hey, Nico! Is it weird if I say I've missed you?"

"It's only been a couple of days," Nico mutters, fighting the impulse to wipe her palms on the skirt of her new dress.

"Hey!" Karolina playfully shoves Nico's shoulder, and Nico's knees are shaking hard enough that she almost loses her balance. "Sorry! But only a little, because I can't believe I spent the last couple of days missing you and apparently you didn't miss _me_ one bit!"

"Pff!" Nico shakes her head, but when Karolina folds her arms, closes her eyes and turns her nose up, Nico can't help another chuckle. "Okay, I missed you!"

Karolina cracks an eyelid. The corner of her mouth curves up. "Yeah?"

Nico takes a deep breath and blows it out. "Yeah. I really did."

"Oh." Karolina relaxes, and a soft smile spreads across her lips. Her eyes fill with warmth. "Good! In that case, you can have some of my bread."

Nico's answering smile withers and her head snaps round when a strange woman's voice calls out, "Karolina?"

Standing at the curve of the road is a young, dark-haired woman. She's dressed in something resembling hunter's clothing, but no hunter would wear skintight silk trousers or bright ribbons on a tailored silk tunic. Everything about her says that she's a noble, and a pampered one. She looks between Nico and Karolina and her mouth twists into a grin that doesn't reach her eyes.

"Eiffel?" Karolina says weakly. "I...were you looking for...me?"

Nico's pulse throbs painfully in her temples. Her hand curls around her staff, but she doesn't pull it from her belt yet.

"Oh, I can see you're busy!" Eiffel shakes her head. She tosses the lustrous waves of her hair back with a practiced flick of her hand. "But I'm sure you'll make time for me later. Won't you, Karrie dear?"

Nico's staff twitches, pushing to be released from her belt. She clamps it down as tightly as she keeps her teeth clamped shut. Nico isn't even sure why she feels so much threat in the air; Eiffel isn't armed and Nico doubts Eiffel has enough magic or training to cause Nico any trouble in a fight. But Nico is angry, _furious_ , and yet, even through the rage, Nico can feel her stomach twist with nausea. "Karrie... _dear_?"

Karolina shoots her a glance then deliberately puts herself between Nico and Eiffel. "I'll talk to you back in the city, Eiffel."

"Great! Do enjoy...whatever you're doing, Karrie. Just don't keep me waiting. Or maybe I'll have a conversation with with the Great Prism, instead. Understand?"

"Yes," Karolina whispers.

"Good! Bye, then!"

Eiffel turns and strolls back to the Shining City, her every movement aggressively languid. Karolina watches her every step of the way, which makes hating Eiffel and her glossy hair and expensive silks and shiny lips one of the easiest things Nico has ever done.

"You want to run after your friend?" Nico snaps. "I have other things to do today, too."

"What? We're not--" Karolina wrenches her gaze from the other girl at last. She groans, pressing the heel of her hand to her forehead. "Nico, Eiffel doesn't like me. I don't...much care for her, either. I try to avoid her, to be honest. She can be...cruel."

"Most people are, even when they don't mean to be. Being cruel doesn't make her special." Nico frowns. "Wait, _she_ doesn't like _you_? Who could dislike you?"

"A lot of people..."

Nico feels another flare of temper, but she understands exactly what she's feeling this time. "Then they don't know you. If they did, they'd like you. If they don't want to _get_ to know you, they're fools and you should forget them." Karolina stares at her, long enough for Nico's anger to cool and another emotion to heat up her face. "What?"

"Nico..." Karolina smiles. "I'm really happy you're my friend. That's all."

"Oh." Nico looks down, nudging her staff back into her belt. She swallows. "Okay."

"Come on." Karolina gently touches Nico's elbow, guiding her to the shelter of the boundary stone. "I'm sorry, I should've been more careful. Eiffel is...it isn't good that she knows I'm meeting you. Even if she doesn't know you're the Witch of the Woods...she could cause us a lot of trouble."

Nico frowns, leaning against the stone. "She's the one Alex said was asking about you, isn't she?"

"Yes."

"What...sort of trouble can she cause you?"

Karolina grimaces. "If she reports me for meeting with the Witch of the Woods? I'll be confined to the city, at the very least. I'm more worried about what might happen if the Radiant Guard find out about you, though, Nico. They could set an ambush, they could go looking for your camp, they could--"

"Don't worry about me." Nico summons what little courage she has and takes Karolina's hand. She can't help the way her breath hitches when Karolina smiles and links their fingers together. "The Radiant Guard stopped sending their troops into the Old Forest six years ago. Probably because none of them came back."

Karolina's eyes widen.

"I didn't hurt them," Nico blurts, relieved when Karolina squeezes her hand. "I promise. I hid. And the Old Forest...they upset the trees. That's all."

"You were just a child, and they were hunting you? Gods' light...Nico, I don't want you to have to hurt anyone," Karolina sighs. Seemingly without thinking, she reaches out and tucks a strand of Nico's hair behind her ear. "And I don't want anyone to hurt you. Maybe we should have listened to Alex. I've been selfish, meeting you like this. I've put you in danger."

"No! I wanted this too! I want...this." Nico licks her lips. "I'm not giving you up. Not for anything. Not for anyone. Okay?"

"But--"

"I'm going to...things are going to change. For me. And...for you." Nico bows her head. "Maybe for the whole city."

"Nico..." Karolina cups a hand around Nico's cheek, curling her fingers around her jaw and tilting her face up so that they're looking into each other's eyes again. "Nico, if Alex has asked you...you can say no to him. This fight isn't yours."

"It's not about him," Nico says quickly. She places her hand over the back of Karolina's, afraid of the coming moment when Karolina will stop touching her. "I have something I need to do. Something I swore I'd do ten years ago. I'll do it soon, and then...then Alex can expose the Ruling Council and I... _we_ , we'll both be free. I promise."

"Nico..." Karolina gently runs her thumb across Nico's cheekbone, making Nico's whole body shiver in response. "I want you to be safe. The idea of you getting hurt... _that_ scares me."

"I'll be okay. I promise." Nico bites the inside of her lip, but the words spill out of her anyway. "You not wanting to be my friend anymore scares me."

"You know... " Karolina leans down closer. Softly, she says, "You're making a lot of promises."

"Yeah." Nico smiles weakly. "But I always keep my word, so..."

"I'll just have to trust you'll stay safe, then." Karolina smiles. "And I'll make a promise of my own: I will _always_ be your friend, Nico. No matter what."

Karolina's lips aren't so far away anymore. But Nico can't find the courage to reach for them. She runs her thumb across the back of Karolina's hand, marvelling at the feel of her skin, at her warmth, at how close she is. Reluctantly, Nico pats Karolina's hand and drops her own. Karolina blinks, then lets her go and takes a step back.

"You should go after Eiffel," Nico says, wrinkling her nose. "Stay out of trouble for just a little longer, and then...things will be different."

"I..." Karolina sighs. "You're right. I should go talk to her. What are you going to do?"

"I have to get something from the Old Forest. I'm going to do that."

Karolina frowns, but she nods. "Okay. But first, you need to eat a good breakfast!" She tugs her bag from her shoulder, opens it and begins passing Nico bread and fruit and cheese. "Here, take it all! I'll get something when I'm back in the city."

Nico hesitates, even though she knows already that she'll lose if she tries to argue. "But I didn't make tea, so you--"

"I still owe you debts, so don't worry about--"

"You don't!" It comes out louder than Nico intended. But so much has happened so quickly this morning, and it feels like there is so much that needs to be said still, that Nico is struggling to separate what she needs to keep to herself for now and what she needs to say aloud. Lowering her voice, she tries to pick her way through her scattered thoughts to find the right words. "I...I don't _want_ you to owe me. I don't want you to meet me and give me things because you think you owe me..."

"That isn't why." Karolina smiles, but her eyes...her eyes are open windows and behind them is the same feeling Nico didn't dare put a word to earlier. "You have to know by now, that isn't why. I want to share things with you, Nico. I want to share everything with you, in time. All you need to do to pay me back is be willing to share as much as you can with me. That's all I need. That's all I'll ever need."

Nico swallows, staring at the bread in Karolina's hands. "I...there are so many things I haven't...and I want to! But I don't know how to tell you--"

"We'll figure that out. There are a lot of things we don't know about each other. But we can figure it out." Karolina offers her the loaf. "Right?"

Nico accepts, quickly stuffing it into her own bag. She hesitates, looking up at the bright sky, then blurts, "Can you meet me tomorrow?"

Karolina purses her lips, but she nods. "Yes. I'll make sure Eiffel isn't going to cause any trouble, and I'll meet you tomorrow."

"Okay..." Nico feels suddenly exhausted, but she manages a chuckle when Karolina shovels the rest of the food into Nico's bag. "Okay. I'll see you tomorrow."

"You will," Karolina says brightly, pulling Nico into one last, much too brief hug. "I promise."

Nico hugs her fiercely, then turns and strides back to the Old Forest, no less burdened with fears and worries than she was when she woke up, but filled with a belief in Karolina that makes them all a far easier burden to carry.

* * *

Later that day, Nico is wearing her old dress and training with her knife when her staff suddenly stands upright. Nico gapes at it as it twitches and sprouts a shoot from its top. The shoot grows rapidly, becoming a twig that in turn sprouts a mottled black leaf. The leaf falls, drifting slowly to the earth. The twig withers, breaking from Nico's staff in a tiny shower of black decay.

Nico sucks in a breath. She knows that this must be the work of the Youngest Oldest Tree. She slides her knife into the sheath on her belt and wipes her brow. She summons her staff to her hand and takes another deep breath before she stoops to examine the leaf. It takes Nico a few moments of her staring at it in puzzlement before she understands what she's seeing. The mottles and striations on the leaf, all of which are in shades of grey and black, suddenly take on meaning: she's looking at a kind of map. A map which will lead her to the library and the prismatic tablets, assuming she can read it.

Which, given she has no frame of reference to understand what any of the various symbols on the leaf mean, Nico can't. Nico rubs her jaw, frowning. "Hmph! Bad trees make bad deals. But..." She raises her staff, pointing the tip of it at the leaf. " _Guide me_! Take me safely to the library."

A breeze springs up, wafting the leaf up into the air. It spins lazily in the air currents, then it begins to drift off through the trees to the south. Pausing only to grab her shawl, her bag with her waterskin, and a pair of Karolina's apples, Nico follows the leaf.

It's easy, at first. She follows through familiar groves, moving steadily rather than quickly. Nico summons the darkness of the Midnight Grove from her shawl and her dress. In the gloom of the Old Forest, the shadows her clothes drape over her make her nearly invisible. Her feet make no sound as she crosses the forest floor and even her breathing is light and muted. She wears no manticore venom, but a neutral scent, one that makes her as indiscernible to the nose of a predator as she is to the eye.

Of course, since she treads the ground in which their roots burrow, the trees know where Nico is. The trees always know. At first, though, she walks among the trees that like her. And then, as the day wanes and the leaf floats on and on, she walks among the trees that tolerate her, and then among the trees that dislike her, but owe her debts, and then among the trees that fear her, and then among trees she doesn't know at all.

At least the unfamiliar trees are younger trees. They're still dangerous, but not necessarily deadly at a first encounter. Normally, Nico would take her time and build a relationship with new trees, but the Youngest Oldest Tree's leaf, driven by her spell, doesn't stop. Nico is forced to follow, moving as slowly as she dares, as warily as she can, and with all the care she can muster for the trees around her, their branches above her and their roots beneath her. She walks until her waterskin is empty and her apple cores have been given as offering to two especially surly trees. She walks until the last weak rays of the sun have been choked out by the leaves above, and still the leaf floats on.

She doesn't notice when the leaf tumbles out of the air at last. She doesn't notice because she's distracted by the place the leaf leads her to: a clearing, more still and silent than any place Nico has ever known. In the darkness, Nico can make out the shapes of things too regular to be anything other than walls. They stand higher than any other structure Nico has seen in the Old Forest; it's hard to say, in the darkness, but the buildings in the clearing look _intact_.

Nico stops at the edge of the clearing, looking around, hunting for something she can dimly sense but which she cannot name. It's only after a minute of useless searching that she realises that the leaf has stopped moving. It takes her another minute to spot it: it lies on the earth a dozen paces in front of her, darker than the darkness around it.

Nico swallows, the sound painfully loud in the silence of the clearing. It occurs to her that she has avoided the beasts of the Old Forest all day in part because of her stealth and in part because of her magic. But for the last...half an hour? Longer? Nico hasn't avoided anything. There has been nothing to avoid. The only living things nearby are Nico and the trees, and even the trees are too quiet. The trees here are nothing like the trees in the rest of the Old Forest.

Nico frowns. She places her palm against the bark of the nearest tree and waits. She waits, slowing her breathing and tuning out the singing of the blood in her temples, and she listens past the silence until she finds the pulse of the tree. As soon as she does, her frown deepens. There is hardly any trace of black magic in this tree's sap. There is only the barest hint of an awareness of the greater forest to be found in its roots.

Nico licks her lips. The trees might be powerless, but there is power in the clearing. The magic of a powerful spell lies coiled around the buildings she can see, doubtless the magic that has helped these buildings endure without maintenance for centuries or longer. But preservation magic alone shouldn't have been enough to protect this place, not from the questing roots of the Old Forest's trees. No, there's something else here. Nico can sense it, and even though it feels faint to her, Nico feels dread settle its weight on her like a blanket of winter snow.

She doesn't want to set foot in the clearing. 

But she must. Alex and the others would never make it this deep into the Old Forest, so there's no hope of coming back another time with backup. Nico wonders if it would have been so easy for her to get here, without the power of the Youngest Oldest Tree to guide her. She hopes that explains the absence of threats she's encountered, but either way it's a power she no longer has. Nico has been led to her destination, the rest depends on her. 

She's tired, but far from exhausted. She's used relatively little magic. Her knife is as sharp as her reflexes and her staff sits in her hand ready to enact her will. Nico's will is strong. Stronger than her fear. She thinks of Karolina's smile, she thinks of the destruction of the Guardian, she thinks of the life that she might have once she's taken her revenge.

Nico takes a deep breath. She loosens her knife in its sheath, grips her staff tightly, and steps into the clearing.

* * *

A dozen paces take her to the place where the leaf fell. A dozen paces take her to a place where the wall of a building rises up above her, with no tree limbs rising above it. The sky sits above her, full of cold and distant stars. They cast a faint light, enough for Nico to see that she's standing in front of a pair of doors. Perhaps once they wore paint, but now they are bare wood. They are eight feet tall and banded with metal that gleams, even in starlight.

Nico touches the door on her left, pushing gently with the tips of her fingers. The door opens smoothly, soundlessly, onto a hallway that ends with another set of doors. Nico forces herself across the threshold, into and along the hall, to the double doors at the far end. She chooses the left hand door again, and it swings open as smoothly as the first. Nico wrinkles her nose at the smell that greets her. There's a sweet scent, like overripe fruit, hanging in the air. She looks back. Behind her, the main door remains open. Nico pushes down her rising fear and goes into the library.

She senses rather than sees the vastness of the chamber. The weight of dry, old air around her tells Nico that the chamber is as tall as the whole building and extends what must be hundreds of feet in every direction around her. The only light inside it, though, is what little leaks through the door behind her.

A spell to create light dies before it can escape Nico's mouth. The hair on the back of her neck is standing up. Instinct tells her to stay unseen.

Nico extends her staff in front of her, sweeping the tip along the ground in a series of tight arcs as she shuffles deeper into the chamber. The faint scrape of wood on stone seems impossibly loud. It isn't long before the staff bumps into something. Nico feels around what she thinks at first is the edge of a wall but soon realises is a shelf. Or rather, a series of shelves which extends above her head and to her right farther than she can reach. She slips round the left hand side of the shelf and walks on, only to meet another set of shelves two paces later.

Nico stops. Her jaw hurts from how tightly she's clenching her teeth. She's gripping her staff in both hands because they're shaking so badly. She knows she can't hope to explore this place in darkness. She knows she'll never find what she's looking for without light. But she hesitates, afraid to summon light. Instead, she strains every sense she has hunting for the location of that faint power she can feel more clearly than ever now.

When she was five, Nico had a bad dream that woke her, screaming, in the deep of the night. Her father had come to check on her, and--finding her too scared to be able to sleep--he had picked her up, sat her on his shoulders and taken her out to the garden. There he had shown Nico the stars above and told her the names of a dozen constellations she had forgotten by the following morning. But he had told her something Nico has always remembered: that the stars, small and weak as they were compared to the sun, were hiding a secret. A secret, Robert Minoru had promised her, that the stars and Nico shared.

She had listened, filled with wonder, as he told her that each tiny star was a vast, powerful sun. They only looked small because they were so far away, but they had so much power, so much light within them that they could reach out across unimaginable distances and touch the lives of people like Robert and his daughter.

He had reached up and touched a finger to her heart and said, "You are the same, Nico. Small at this point, but you have a vast power within you. You are stronger than your dreams. Strong enough to defy the bad ones and make the good ones come true."

She had slept the whole night through after that. 

The memory does nothing to comfort her now, though. Not when it helps Nico understand the root of her fear: the power she senses is not faint because it is weak, but because it is remote. It is remote not because it is physically distant, but because it has no awareness of her. The power she senses is vast, Nico knows. She must not make it aware of her. But she must find the tablets. And without light, it will be impossible.

Unless...perhaps she doesn't need light, but a different way to see. Nico thinks of the birds and beasts of the forest, the ones who hunt at night, their eyes able to cut through all but the deepest darkness. Under her breath, Nico whispers a prayer to the Triple Goddess. Then, as softly as she can, she whispers, " _Give me sight_."

The top of her staff begins to emit a dull green glow. It doesn't so much alleviate the darkness as it give it a different texture. Nico raises the staff to her eyes and looks through the green light. It is as if the darkness in front of her is peeled back, revealing in shades of green and grey and black a paved stone floor and high stone shelves filled with recesses for scrolls and books.

Nico smiles, until something odd catches her eye. Moving closer to the nearest recess, she peers into it. She finds only scraps of parchment, but where at first glance she thought that whatever magic preserving the library had failed its contents, a closer look reveals that the book that rested here has been torn to shreds by a fistful of razor blades.

Or claws.

Nico takes one of the larger surviving pieces of parchment and studies it. It appears to be perfectly preserved, aside from the damage inflicted on it. Nestling her staff in the crook of her arm, Nico tries to tear the fragment. It begins to split, then the resistance Nico's fingers work against increases beyond the strength of the material itself. After several seconds of effort, Nico gives up with a quiet gasp. She raises her staff and checks the fragment, unsurprised to discover that the tiny rip she made at first has been repaired.

The magic in this place is _strong_ , then.

Nico puts the fragment back with the other tattered remnants. She walks deeper into the library, pausing to check several more shelves. At random, she turns down an an aisle off the main path and checks the shelves on either side of her. Limbs trembling, Nico clamps her staff under her armpit and climbs one of the shelves to the very top, some twelve feet in the air. She pauses periodically to look through the green glow of her staff into the various niches and spaces on the shelves.

She finds, at the top, the same thing she has found everywhere else: every book, every scroll, on every shelf has been torn to shreds by something stronger than even than the preservation magic woven into the library.

Nico climbs down to the floor again, wincing every time she hears drops of her sweat hit the stone below. She reaches the ground safely, but Nico knows that she isn't safe. She knows that she's in more danger than she's ever been since the Guardian's radiance fell upon her ten years ago.

* * *

It would doubtless be wiser to turn back, but Nico refuses to listen to wisdom or to fear. Instead, she returns to the main path and pushes deeper into the library, her spell letting her navigate the darkness while giving off only the faintest light. She doesn't bother to check any of the remaining shelves, knowing that she will find no pieces of paper, or vellum, or papyrus intact enough to read more than a single word of what was once written there.

It would doubtless be wiser to assume that everything in the library has been destroyed just as thoroughly, but Nico's mother always held that there was no wisdom in assumptions. Nico didn't come here for books or scrolls, she came here for tablets of stone or clay, and until she _knows_ they've been destroyed, Nico won't turn back.

Because Nico knows that when she leaves this place, she will never return to it. She's too much of a coward for that. Tonight, while her courage lasts, is her only chance to find what she needs to guarantee her victory over the Guardian.

She walks, her feet kicking up clouds of dust she can barely see, until the stone shelves run out. She walks further, through a huge area full of tables and chairs, and she almost screams when she bumps into something tall and spindly. 

Nico's panicked response is to shove it away, but when she realises that it's made of metal, it's only her adrenaline fuelled reflexes that let her snatch it before it hits the floor. As it is, it rattles as she restores it to its upright position and it emits a faint humming sound. It's some kind of lamp holder, Nico discovers when she examines it, but instead of a lamp there is some kind of crystal suspended in wire mesh at the top of the frame. Nico touches the crystal with her fingertip and the humming ceases.

After that she moves more warily than ever, until she's past the tables and has reached the far wall of the building. She finds a smaller door which opens at her touch and reveals a stairwell spiralling down like a drill into the depths.

Nico goes down the stairs, and her fear gets worse with every step. Rather than slow her down, it encourages her to move more quickly until she's taking the stairs two at a time. In the confines of the stairwell, the sound of her laboured breathing becomes deafening, drowning out even the sound of her boots slapping against stone and her heart pounding against the prison of her ribs.

She pushes on, deep and deeper into the earth, until she suddenly reaches the bottom of the stairs and trips, stumbling into a wall and using it and her staff to keep herself upright. Nico wipes sweat from her brow with a sweaty forearm. She breathes deep, but the air is thin and old and choked with dust. It doesn't satisfy the need in her lungs, it does nothing but deepen the pit of terror in her chest.

Nico holds up her staff with trembling hands, and the darkness falls away, showing her a stone door shorter by an inch than even she is. She touches it, but it doesn't open. It doesn't budge, not even when she puts her shoulder to it and heaves. It doesn't open, not to any of the spells of unlocking that Nico has learned over the years, spells that she hisses in increasing frustration to the unyielding stone.

It doesn't move, but in a moment between spells, in a moment between breaths, something else does. Far away, tiny and tinny, comes the sound of something metallic falling to the floor with a _crash_. Something like one of the crystal lamp holders Nico bumped into, perhaps.

Nico feels the air shift, feels _pressure_ compress everything in the stairwell, even her spine. Her ears pop. She feels a moment of dizziness, and then she feels nothing for a fraction of a second that lasts too long and then...

Sensation returns, bringing with it a new perspective: the power she felt so faintly before has become aware of her. In focusing on her, it has revealed its true extent to her.

Nico claps a hand over her mouth to stifle her scream. And then, her mind outpacing her terrified body, she points her staff up the stairs and lets out the scream as a spell: " _ECHO_!"

Her scream travels up the stairwell, bouncing off the walls and multiplying into a dozen, a score, a hundred screams. The screams burst out of the confines of the stairwell, into the library above. Even from this far below Nico can hear her screams bouncing off of bookshelves and setting crystals to rattling and humming. She can hear other things, too. More crashing and a shriek of tearing metal that rises above even the cacophony of her spell.

Nico wonders how much time she's bought herself. She doubts if it's more than a few minutes.

Nico points her staff at the door, her arm shaking, her mind racing. She mutters, "Think, think! It's sealed, and I can't open the lock. It's sealed and bound in preservation magic. It's dead but it remembers, it remembers its shape. The magic tells it to keep its shape. The magic has kept this building intact for _millenia_ , though, it's too strong, I can't break it with force! I can't get past it, I...no, wait! Its strength is its weakness!" Nico surges forward, pressing her staff to the door. " _Remember your birth!_ "

Nico calls on the lessons her mother taught her about magic, she calls on the lessons her father taught her about the world, she calls on her terror to fuel her will and she directs her will at the door. The magic that preserves this place is strong, but simple. It tells the rock of the door to return to its shape, over and over, moment by moment, so that the ravages of time and the assault of magic or brute force are unable to do more than damage it. The door will always return to its original form, and the magic her e is powerful enough for it to happen within seconds.

But the rock wasn't always a door. It wasn't always a _solid_. Nico doesn't need to destroy the door or break the preservation spell, she just needs to make the rock remember its _true_ original form and let the preservation spell do the rest of the work for her.

Rocks aren't as clever or persistent as trees, and although they can be stubborn, Nico is more stubborn than any rock. She's had to be, to make deals with the trees of the Old Forest. She's had to be, to survive. So although the rock tries to resist her at first, it only makes Nico dig deeper and push harder. After all, she doesn't even need to convince it of anything: Nico just needs to _remind_ it that before it was cold and unyielding, it was hot and flowing.

Before it was rock, it was magma.

Nico's spell takes hold after only a few seconds, the door awakening to its molten birth. And once that idea is in place, the preservation magic floods power into the rock, and the rock reverts to its original state. Nico yanks her staff back as heat bursts from the surface of the door. The stone twists and melts, turning red, orange, yellow and blasting out steam.

" _Protect_ ," Nico snaps, and hurls herself forward.

A shimmering black globe surrounds her as she vaults through the collapsing rock and lava, flinching from the impacts against the energy that protects her. She hits the ground, rolls and springs to her feet, dismissing the shield. She's long past stealth and subtlety now, so she says, " _Light!_ "

A blue-black flame erupts from the top of her staff, illuminating the stone room she finds herself in. It reminds her of the vault she slept in until only a couple of weeks ago, though this chamber is in perfect condition. It contains a pair of stone tables, surrounded by stools and more of the crystal lamps she saw above. And it contains more shelves, though these are only as tall as Nico's chest. The scrolls on _these_ shelves are intact, and Nico feels a surge of excitement, because something _did_ survive the thing rampaging in the library above.

Nico will have to find a way to survive it, too. But she doesn't need to worry about _that_ for perhaps another minute, so she focuses on finding the tablets. She moves past the first rows of shelves, glancing quickly to either side. She looks just long enough to dismiss the scrolls before moving on. She looks left, right and presses on. Left, right and presses on. Left, right and...something different. Nico hurries down the aisle, her staff held high, the blue fire revealing rows of clay tablets.

"So many! Which ones do I need?"

She sweeps along the aisle, hoping for some clue to present itself as the precious seconds tick away and the noises from upstairs begin to fade into silence. She wipes sweat from her brow, flicking it to the side and suddenly freezes. Out of the corner of her eye, Nico sees light. She turns, thrusting her staff at a niche which contains a plinth on which rest three small tablets. As Nico's light falls over them, the tablets shimmer and offer back light of many different colours.

"Thank the Triple Goddess," Nico gasps.

She loads the tablets into her bag as quickly as she dares and runs for the door.

* * *

Nico climbs the stairs in silence, moving towards silence. The last echoes of her scream have faded to nothing and nothing else is moving. But Nico can still sense the powerful presence. Even as she listens intently for a sign of it, she thinks it must be listening for her. She's surprised it can't hear her heart or quick, shallow breaths, or the soft scuff of her boot when she almost misses a step.

She reaches the top of the stairs unharmed, but she finds the library changed. Where before it had been swathed in darkness, now there is light. The crystal lamps are burning, piercing the thick darkness here and there. Many of the lamps have been knocked over, so their light splashes out and up in a variety of angles.

Nico edges round the door and into the library. She swallows when she sees that a stone table she passed earlier has been reduced to rubble. Nico extinguishes the light of her staff. She adjusts her shawl, letting its darkness spill over her. Slowly, she begins to pick her way through scattered tables, chairs and lamps, moving as quietly as she can in the direction of the main doors.

She doesn't see it attack. She doesn't see it at all, when it uncoils from a pool of shadow underneath a table and swipes at her leg. It's only her staff that saves her, twisting in her hand and taking the blow meant for her. Nico hears the wood splinter, then the staff is torn from her hand and she is flung away in the opposite direction, her shoulder slamming into a tabletop.

Years of surviving in the Old Forest allow instinct and muscle memory to get ahead of Nico's confusion. She turns her fall into a roll, landing on her feet on the far side of the table, then she scrambles under another and turns left, heading for the bookshelves. She stays low, ignoring the pain in her shoulder. She doesn't waste time worrying about finding her staff, she focuses only on making sure she survives.

As she runs, Nico removes the pin that keeps her shawl in place. She whips the shawl from her shoulders and hurls it to the left. She goes right, scrambling under a table where she pauses, looking back. She breathes as quietly as she can and watches the space where she threw her shawl.

She doesn't see the thing that snatches it up, but she hears it when it sniffs at the tattered black cloth. She hears it when it tears her shawl apart. All she sees, though, is a vaguely humanoid shape when it flits past the upward-projecting beam of a crystal lamp, disappearing into the darkness like oil poured into a shadow.

Nico crawls out from under the table and runs in the opposite direction of the creature. She vaults over a jumble of fallen chairs, reaches the first of the great bookshelves and, without hesitation, starts climbing. Even with sweat-slicked palms--and a part of her mind screaming at her to look behind her, look behind her, _look behind her_ \--it's an easier climb than most of the trees in the Old Forest are. And even though the shelves are spaced farther apart than the branches tend to be in the Old Forest, it isn't hard to jump from one shelf to the next.

In fact, Nico quickly builds up a steady rhythm and is a only a few shelves away from the exit when her next jump is interrupted by the creature flinging itself up from the floor at her. Something collides with her leg, sending her spinning awkwardly. Something else passes across her side like a breath, and something black and viscous appears before her eyes.

Nico reasons that the fall might kill her but that the creature absolutely will, and that's why she yanks her knife from her belt and stabs at the dark shape in front of her. Her knife is silver-steel, stolen from a caravan years ago and imbued with twelve runes Nico learned from the trunks of twelve different trees, each rune designed to help the knife cut deep and true through magic, armour and flesh.

The black, viscous substance parts before her knife. Nico sees an eye with an iris almost as black as its pupil, sitting in a socket surrounded by grey, withered flesh. It is not a human eye, the eye that stares at her for a sliver of a second that stretches into eternity, but Nico can tell that once, perhaps, it was. Then her knife point pierces the tar-like stuff the creature wears around it and strikes the creature's skin, and a single bead of near-black blood spills out.

The creature shrieks, recoiling in pain. The darkness it wears like a cloak flows around it, obscuring it again, and it flows away into the shadows, out of Nico's sight. Nico's foot hits the edge of a shelf, reminding her that she's falling. She twists, trying to tuck her legs under her and grabs out, closing her fingers around a piece of stone. She's falling too quickly, or perhaps her hand is too sweaty, but she loses her grip the instant after it has to support her full weight. It wrenches something in her shoulder, but it slows her fall enough for her to hit the ground on her side with bruising rather than breaking force.

Nico pushes herself upright. It takes more effort than it should, even taking the fall into consideration. Her side stings suddenly and she clutches at it. Her fingers meet warm, wet blood. It wasn't the creature's breath she felt, but its claws.

Somewhere above her, the creature shrieks like her sister's violin when its tuning pegs had been tightened too much.

"Shit," Nico gasps, pressing her hand tight to the cuts in her side. "Run, Nico!"

She staggers down the aisle, her knife held low and ready, her ears straining. She picks up speed as she rounds the corner of the shelf back onto the main path and runs as best she can for the still open door.

Something thicker than a shadow fills the void of the open door. Nico doesn't hesitate. She hurls her knife at it. The silvery blade hisses through empty air, the shadow thing ducking under effortlessly. It seems to thicken and coalesce, then it launches itself at Nico.

Nico throws her hand out behind her and screams, " _AS ONE!_ " Then she throws herself flat, so that when her staff comes streaking like an arrow from the place where she dropped it, it slams into the shadow thing with enough force to stop a diving wyvern. The shadow thing hits her staff and twists away, snarling. Its claws slice through a strand of Nico's hair, coming two inches short of finding her skull.

Nico rolls away scrambles to her feet. The shadow thing howls and gathers itself for another lunge.

Nico's staff falls into her hand, nestling against her palm. Nico aims the tip of it at the shadow thing and yells the first spell she can think of. " _Boil_!"

And to her horror and relief, the black, viscous shadow that the creature wears like a second skin begins to do just that. It writhes and roils and wisps of black steam rise from its surface.

The creature howls in agony and fury.

Nico runs.

* * *

She runs out of the library, out of the clearing, into the trees with their stunted magic. She runs until her boot meets a tree root and she falls. She lies still for a few moments, panting, until the pain in her side forces her to move.

She touches her staff to the claw wounds in her side and hisses, " _Seal_!"

The magical energy that plugs her cuts does nothing for the pain, but at least it limits her blood loss. Nico uses the staff to climb to her feet, noticing only now the splintered gouges where the shadow thing's claws almost sliced through the lower third of the shaft.

Nico shudders. She hugs the staff to her chest. "Thank you."

Leaning heavily on the staff, Nico sets off for her camp.

* * *

Wariness and fear shaped her journey to the library, but pain and fatigue are her companions on the way back. In spite of her wounds, in spite of the sweat and blood that has undone the work of her neutral scent, in spite of the weakness she shows the Old Forest with every step she takes, Nico makes the journey back without incident.

During the journey, a third companion makes themself known to Nico: fear. Because, even through the pain and the fatigue, Nico knows that there can be only one reason why _none_ of the beasts in the Old Forest try to kill her in her weakened state.

A predator more terrifying than them is already hunting her.

Nico left her knife in the library. She's too tired to use much more magic and too battered to put up much of a fight. All she can do is keep moving forward, hoping that the shadow thing is wary enough of her to wait until her guard is down before it attacks.

It takes her most of the night to reach her camp. Dawn isn't far off by the time she does, and Nico wonders if the shadow thing will break off its pursuit to hide from the sun. Part of her wants it to work that way, but it's the coward in Nico that whispers if she keeps walking, to the edge of the forest, maybe all the way to the boundary stone or even the Radiant Gate, then she can be safe from the thing that follows her. Nico knows that, even if she could make it to the edge of the forest, the creature would never let her leave. She only has one chance to survive, and that's to kill the thing that follows her before it can kill her.

Besides, if she brought that thing to the place where the trees end, it might see Karolina. It might try to hurt her. Nico won't let that happen. She promised she'd meet Karolina, and she decides that she won't break that promise for anything other than death. Her staff twitches in her hand, almost tripping her, and Nico finally has to stop, leaning against a familiar tree. "Yes. I promised I'd kill the Guardian. If I'm alive to meet Karolina, I'll be alive to do that, too."

All around her, the forest becomes utterly silent.

Nico pats the trunk of the tree she's leaning against. "You've been a good sleeping spot. Sorry about this." She pushes away from the tree and staggers into a clear patch of earth a few paces away. She plants her staff in the earth and raises her voice. "Well? I know you followed me. Come on. Finish me, if you can."

She closes her eyes and whispers a scrying spell, summoning an image of the space around her. If she still has a head later, she'll happily suffer a headache. Seconds tick by and nothing moves, not even the wind. Seconds tick by and turn into a minute, then two, and Nico's skull feels like a vice tightening around her brain and sweat is a river down her back and her knees are slowly the fight to keep her upright.

It's in the second before Nico thinks she might black out from the effort of holding up the scrying spell that the shadow thing comes for her, leaping from a tree above and behind her. It's in the second before the shadow thing's claws can touch her that Nico drops the scrying spell and hisses, " _Trigger!_ "

Every single one of the wards she's surrounded by, that she prepared to defend her camp, detonates in response to her spell.

The howls of the shadow thing are drowned by the concussive blasts of her wards. The vast majority of their force is directed away from Nico, but she's still thrown from her feet and bounces several times before she loses all sense of direction and time. All she knows is that later, when she wakes up, and throws up at the sight of the black sludge lining the pit in the earth that her wards created, Nico's only companion is an exhaustion so deep even pain can't reach her.

Nico ignores it and climbs to her feet. Stumbling away from what's left of her camp, clutching at her side to keep the bleeding from her reopened wounds to a minimum, Nico obeys the only thought that her mind can form.

She goes to keep her promise to Karolina, to see her for what she suspects will be the last time.

* * *

Nico staggers to the edge of the trees and sees Karolina leaning against the boundary stone, waiting with a smile on her lips. A smile that dies when she sees Nico, torn and bleeding and barely holding on, a smile that changes to a look of horror when she looks _behind_ Nico. Because it followed her. Because it survived her wards, and, in spite of how badly hurt it must be, it _followed her_. All Nico wanted was to see Karolina one last time, but it was a stupid, selfish, _insane_ want. Karolina might die because of it. 

Nico can't let that happen.

"Nico?" Karolina gasps. She pushes off of the stone and starts walking towards Nico, towards the trees, towards the thing that will kill them both.

"Run," Nico croaks, trying to summon the strength to shout, trying to summon the energy to think of something, anything that might let her hold the shadow thing off for long enough for Karolina to escape. But all her body does is slump against a tree and all her mind does is force her mouth to say, "Just...run."

Karolina does. She runs _towards_ them, her expression changing from one of horror to one of anger, then to one of resolve. She runs, and when she passes the boundary of the Shining City, Karolina's skin blazes with light. Her skin _becomes_ light, light of every conceivable colour, light that radiates warmth and fills Nico with wonder.

And with horror.

There's a part of Nico that has always sensed something powerful in Karolina, but she thought it was the other girl's kindness, her ability to make even someone like Nico feel wanted. But it wasn't that at all, it was always this: power like the sun, burning inside her, magic stronger than any she's ever felt outside the deepest places in the forest. How did she ever dare to get close to Karolina? How could she have been so _blind_ as to think it was safe to get close to Karolina?

The thing that has hunted her, that almost killed her, makes a strange, soft sound. Then it howls a challenge. Nico shudders when its breath washes over her, appalled that it got so close without her noticing. Karolina looks at Nico, then she looks at the shadow thing and her eyes harden for the first time in Nico's experience.

"You will _not_ hurt her again," Karolina says. Her voice is tight and it isn't loud, but Nico hears every word. The Old Forest stills, so that it might not miss a single word. "I am the Guardian of the Shining City. I swore I'd protect her. You should _not_ have hurt her."

Karolina's voice is quiet, but her magic is loud. Loud and raw and as powerful as a hurricane. Waves of light erupt from her, turn the darkness of the Old Forest to a distant memory, and crash into the thing that followed Nico. It howls in agony, but Karolina doesn't relent. She strides into the darkness and the darkness shrinks from her. Power flows from her in endless waves, and Nico can feel the shadow thing shrinking, splintering, collapsing in the face of Karolina's onslaught.

Nico feels dizzy. Her legs give out and she slides down the tree, curling herself into a ball, making herself small. Karolina could reduce mountains to rubble with her power, Nico thinks. Karolina is a _liar_ , Nico now knows, and it feels as though her heart has been reduced to rubble all over again.

The raging storm of Karolina's power finally abates. Nico doesn't need to look to know that that thing is gone, erased from existence, leaving only the wounds in Nico's body and the hollow space inside her that she had filled with Karolina as evidence it ever existed.

"Nico..." Karolina kneels beside her, her skin awash with colour. It seems cruel to Nico, how there is no cruelty even now in Karolina's beauty. "Nico, you're bleeding. Let me see. Nico, please let me see."

"You're not...you can't be the Guardian. You're not! He...he--"

"He's dead, Nico," Karolina whispers, her eyes clouding over. "Jonah was my father, my birth father, but he's dead. He...a year ago, I became the new Guardian. I should have told you, but I...you were afraid. That first morning, by the boundary stone. You were afraid of the Guardian and I didn't want you to be afraid. I'm _sorry_ , Nico."

Nico is so focused on Karolina's words that she barely registers Karolina tugging her hands away from her wounds, barely registers the way Karolina presses her hands to Nico's torn body. She isn't sure if the warmth she feels comes from Karolina's hands or from the blood flowing out of her body. Nico is too focused on the understanding that fills her emptying veins with the absolute certainty of her failure.

Jonah is dead. Jonah has been dead for a year. Nico waited too long and her chance for vengeance, her whole purpose for living, was lost without her even knowing it. And to buy what she thought would give her victory, Nico has sacrificed the only home she knows. To buy a chance at happiness, she put her faith in Karolina's friendship, and Karolina's friendship was false from the beginning.

"You're going to be okay, Nico," Karolina says, her voice shaking. "I'm going to take care of you."

Nico spits out a laugh. "You're a liar. Just like your parents."

Karolina flinches, her light dimming. Her mouth opens, but no sound escapes her lips.

"I was going to kill him." Nico sucks in a breath and struggles upright. "Jonah. He murdered my family, so I was going to kill him. I swore it. Swore vengeance on the Guardian."

Karolina shakes her head. Tears flow down her cheeks, refracting the light her skin emits in a thousand different shades. "Nico...oh, Nico--"

"Go."

"What? No! You're hurt, you need help! I--"

"I'll kill you," Nico hisses, blinking away her own tears. "I swore I'd kill the Guardian and you're the Guardian! You're a liar and I'll kill you! I _hate_ you! GO!"

"Nico..." Karolina bows her head. Her hair falls over her face, and her light is extinguished. "I'm so sorry, Nico. I'm so sorry. Please just...just hold on. I'll send help. I swear I'll--"

"I hate you," Nico whispers. "I never want to see you again."

Without another word, Karolina goes.

She leaves Nico in darkness and in tears. She leaves Nico unsure if the pain in her body or the pain in her heart is greater. She leaves, and Nico falls into darkness, into deeper darkness, into the pure black of nothing at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Sorry, Nico.
> 
> Soooo, yeah! That got long! Was it too long? I did think about splitting it, but I didn't. For...reasons. Let me know what you thought! And in general, please do leave a comment! I appreciate them all and it always gives me a boost to read them!
> 
> Definitely just one more chapter to go! It...probably won't be as long as this 'un. See you in the grand finale!


	5. Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm finally back! And truly, I have learned to appreciate Zeno's Paradox writing this fic...
> 
> Without further ado, the, uh, penultimate chapter awaits!

Nico wakes up slowly. From the scratchiness in her throat and the ache in her body, Nico knows she’s been ill. It takes her longer to work out that the warm, comfortable thing under her is a bed. It takes her even longer than _that_ to realise that someone is holding her hand. The hand is too soft and too small to belong to her father, and her mother has refused to hold her hand since Nico turned four, saying she was too old to be coddled.

That leaves only one possibility.

“Amy?” Nico whispers, her voice cracking like lake ice under a Spring sun. “You shouldn’t...do that. Mom’ll be mad if you get sick, too.”

Nico opens her eyes. For a moment, as she blinks away the blurriness, Nico doesn’t recognise the dark-haired young woman holding her hand. She only knows that it isn’t her sister. And then the last tatters of sleep fall away, taking Amy’s ghost with them and leaving Nico freshly orphaned.

“Oh.” Nico swallows painfully. “Molly.”

“It’s, uh, it’s good to see you awake!” Molly tries to smile, but her eyes give the lie to the shape her lips make. “Here! You should drink this.”

Molly squeezes Nico’s hand before letting her go. She turns to a table that sits by the bed and pours water from an old clay jug into an old wooden cup. She holds it to Nico’s mouth, moving so quickly she spills a few drops on the blanket Nico’s swaddled under. Nico wants to protest, to take the cup and prove she’s strong enough to drink for herself, but any thought of that dies when pushing herself up on her elbows robs Nico of most of her energy. She lets Molly feed her sips of water until the cup is empty. Molly fills it again and, this time, Nico manages to hold it herself in both hands.

It’s when Nico’s finishing the second cup and is starting to feel a little more clear-headed that Molly asks, “Who’s Amy?”

Nico freezes. She’s tempted to hurl a curse at the younger girl, but Molly is watching her with wide eyes, her expression full of nothing but care and concern. Nico runs her tongue around the inside of her mouth, feeling it rasp against the decade-long seal of her silence. “My sister.”

It’s a mistake, saying it that way, because Nico has to watch Molly blossom. She leans forward, smiling eagerly. “You have a sister?”

“...no. I did. She...died.”

“I’m sorry,” Molly whispers, her face falling. Her hands twitch in her lap, as if she has to curb the instinct to reach out and comfort Nico. “That’s really sad.”

There are a lot of things that Nico could say to that, but few of them are good, and none of them seem necessary. Instead, she asks, “Why am _I_ not dead?”

“Huh?” Molly blinks. “Oh! We saved you? You know, Gert and Chase and Alex and I. You’d been hurt pretty bad, but Ka--ah, that is, the bleeding had been...it had stopped. So we were able to get to you and patch you up. Then we brought you here, and we’ve been taking turns keeping an eye on you while you slept.”

That’s a lot to process. Nico weighs it all, thinking that she needs to have words with Alex about the lies and half-truths he used to manipulate her. It fills her with a sudden fury, one that leaves her dizzy, to think of how _stupid_ she must have seemed to him, how easy to fool.

Nico welcomes the anger, and the pain that comes with it, because it distracts her from thinking about...the reason she lowered her guard and let herself trust Alex in the first place. Even through her anger, Nico can feel her heart clench and her stomach churn at the thought of long, golden hair, eyes bluer than the summer sky, skin...skin blazing with every colour of the rainbow. 

Nico remembers how beautiful those lights were, even when they produced power that raged like an endless storm. And...how gentle she had been when she had touched Nico. When she’d used the same, terrible power to stop Nico’s bleeding, saving Nico’s life a second time in as many minutes, she'd been so _gentle_...

She’d lied, though. She was the _Guardian_! She was Jonah’s _daughter_ , and Jonah was...dead.

Jonah is dead.

Nico grits her teeth and tries to summon Alex’s face to her mind’s eye, hoping to keep her anger sharp. Hating him isn’t as easy as Nico had hoped it might be. It _should_ be easy, because now that Jonah is gone, she should have hate to spare. But hate seems lost beneath the grey sea of her weariness. It's exhausting, dredging up the sunken remnants of her hate, but it’s still easier than trying to process any of the things she feels about...her. 

Nico’s thoughts begin to slide towards the shadow thing, and Jonah, and...she sucks in a breath and tries to focus.

“Where am I, Molly?” A glance around the room satisfies her that she isn’t in the Shining City. The walls of this building are made of rough blocks of stone. Rags have been stuffed into the cracks left by worn mortar. There are candles, matches, and a wax-smeared candlestick on a table by the bed. The mattress is soft and feels new, as does the bedding, but the other furniture Nico can see is made of wood, clumsily constructed and old. “How long have I been unconscious?”

“You’ve been drifting in and out of sleep for three days. You weren’t exactly yourself, um...you had a fever. You were pretty out of it. Oh, uh, we're in a hunting lodge, just outside the Old Forest. It’s been abandoned for a while, but Gert and Chase knew where it was. Gert said they found it a week ago, but didn’t want to tell anyone until they’d fixed it up completely. Luckily, they'd already moved a new bed and some other things in! It's a good place to recover, because no one really comes out here anymore, not since...well, not since people in the city got scared of you. Of the Witch of the Woods, I mean."

Nico isn't sure what to say to that. It's just over a week before the moon will be full. That means that in a week, Nico will have to keep her promise to The Oldest Youngest Tree, and leave the Old Forest forever. She wonders what the people of the Shining City will do, when they realise that the Witch of the Woods is gone. Who will they hate, who will they fear instead of her?

Perhaps it won’t matter. If they do go to war, like Alex claimed they would, then they’ll find plenty of people to hate. There will be plenty of people who will hate _them_. Nico knows that if they try to clear the Old Forest, to expand the city, they won’t find it easy. But she’ll be gone by then, an easily forgotten myth to many, fading memory to people like Molly.

Nico had always thought that, when she'd killed the Guardian--when she'd killed _Jonah_ \--she'd leave the Old Forest. She'd always thought that she'd have some idea of where to go by then, perhaps to one of the towns or cities she'd watched during her scrying sessions. She'd always thought that she'd feel free, free to go somewhere new, free to _be_ someone new.

But Jonah is dead, and Nico doesn't feel free. She feels cut off from everything familiar and distant from anything good. She wants to go back to the Old Forest, crawl into the vault she slept in for nearly a year, and seal herself inside it. Nico knows that she can't do that, though. If she breaks her promise to the Youngest Oldest Tree, her old vault won’t be enough to protect her. Nothing will.

Before she’s aware of the urge to speak building inside her, Nico blurts, “Is it...all f-four of you? Who’ve been watching over me, I mean.”

Molly hesitates. “...yes. Alex and Chase and Gert and me.”

There are other things that Nico needs to know, other things she should try to do, but all at once fatigue presses down on her, forcing to slide down into the soft embrace of the bed.

"Oh." Nico whispers. “I’m going to sleep.”

"Oh! O-okay. Don't worry, someone'll be here when you wake up. We're going to take care of you."

Nico knows she means it. Nico knows better than to believe Molly or any of the others will be able to do it.

Sleep is merciful to her. It brings only the familiar nightmare, which she prefers to the problems that will be waiting for her the next time she wakes.

* * *

The next time Nico wakes up, Alex is there.

It's morning, judging by the light spilling through the window, and through the cracks in the wall. Nico finds that she is hungry this time, as well as thirsty. Thankfully, it's easier to push herself up into a sitting position, even if it leaves her short of breath for a couple of seconds.

Alex makes no move to help her. He lifts his head from the book he was reading and watches her struggle. He waits until she's recovered, then says, "How are you feeling?'

Nico sucks in a breath, hoping the air will wake the embers of her anger into a blaze. "Deceived."

"Ah." Alex's mouth tightens. "Would it matter if I said I had good intentions?"

"No." Nico groans. "But _is_ that what you're saying?"

"I...I didn't want you to get hurt, Nico. I didn't think you'd go alone! I--"

"You didn't care about me getting hurt," Nico rasps. "You didn’t care about how your lies might hurt me, and you don't care now. You may feel guilty about it, but that isn't the same thing, Alex."

"Nico..." His expression crumples, and he looks--for the first time--every bit as young as he is. He lowers his head for a minute. "I do feel guilty. I _do_ care. But...I found the tablets. In your bag? You had it on you." He taps the book in his lap, then raises his head, his mouth firm. "Gert's been working on this translation, and reading what we have so far, I think we have a chance. Even without your help, we have a chance to change things in the city.”

He licks his lips, and leans forward. “But with your magic, Nico, I _know_ we could bring our parents down. And free Karol--"

"Don't!” Nico forces herself to sit upright, glaring at him. “Don't say her name. Don't _dare_ ask me for anything again. Or you’ll find out exactly what my magic can do."

"Okay." He winces. "I...okay." He drums his fingers on the cover of the book. "Nico...when this is over? When my parents have been stopped, when their war plans have been stopped, when it's _all_ been stopped, I'll have time to let myself feel this. All of it. I'll have time to be every bit as ashamed as I should be. I can't right now, though. I won't apologise again. I don't think you want to hear it. But I owe you. I owe you more than--"

"No. There is nothing between us. No debts, no favours, no _friendship_ ," Nico spits. "I've been sitting here listening to you, trying to hate you. Maybe I'm too tired, but I can't do it. I...don't even want to hate you anymore. All I want from you, Alex, is nothing."

He doesn't say anything for a long time. When he does, his voice shakes on the first few words, before it evens out. "I, ah, I see. I guess...if you ever change your mind...look, when the Ruling Council has been brought down, there'll be a place for you, in the Shining City. You won't have to deal with me again, but you could have a home--"

"I will _never_ set foot in that _fucking_ place. There's...there's nothing there for me. There’s no one." Nico draws in another breath, but her anger won't blaze fully to life, even now. Nico feels cold and hollow and weak. "Is there food?"

He takes a bag from under his chair. "Yeah, I've got some things--"

"Good. It stays. You go."

His mouth tightens, but after a second, he nods. "Fine. I'll be outside until Chase gets here. If you need me, just shout."

"I won't," Nico assures him.

* * *

Evening brings darkness that Nico keeps at bay with a candle. Evening brings a hesitant knock on the old, warped wood of the bedroom door. It's followed by Chase, who pokes his head into the room, looking like someone who doesn't want to be on the receiving end of an angry Witch of the Woods. "How are you feeling?"

Implicit in the question is another: are you angry at _me_ as well?

Nico isn't, at least not more than she is at anyone else, so she shrugs. "I'm stronger. But hungry. Did you bring food?"

"I did." Chase nudges the door open on its creaking hinges and steps into the room, his arms full of fruit, bread, several cloth-wrapped bundles, and a waterskin. "I've got some fresh clothes, and bandages here, too."

He carries it to the bed, where Nico lies. She moves her legs out of the way just before he dumps everything where they had been.

"Thanks," Nico mutters, watching him sort through everything. "If you give me the bandages...ah, is there somewhere I can wash?"

"There's a stream a few minutes walk to the South. Oh!" He fumbles around in the mess he's made, producing three packages. He places them on the chair beside the bed, one by one. "Bandages, a dress and, uh, under...things, a-and soap!"

Nico's surprised to find tears pricking at her eyes. She's unused to the idea of washing having such an emotional impact, but, after Alex left, she worked up a sweat stretching, walking, and stabbing at the air with an imaginary knife. She's been sitting in the lingering presence of that decision ever since. It's been four or five days since Nico last washed, and she still has dirt and specks of the thing that hunted her through the forest on her skin.

She’s desperate to be free of it all, desperate to be clean.

She gets out of bed, her legs less steady than she'd like, but stronger than they were this morning.

"Do you need help?" Chase watches her, his hands rising up to waist height, clearly worried she'll fall. Abruptly, though, his face reddens and he backs away. "Uh, I mean, help getting to the stream, not help washing! I'll be back here, while any washing is going on. Not facing the window."

The window doesn't even face South. Nico raises her eyebrows.

"Gert made it, ah, _very_ clear how I should behave, when I was alone with you." Chase clears his throat. "Very, _very_ clear."

"Oh." Nico purses her lips. "Doesn't she know she can trust you? You and Gert are together, aren't you?"

"How...?" It's almost like magic, how quickly his face goes from red to chalk white. "I mean, what? I mean, we're not! I mean, she just wanted to make sure you were..." His shoulders slump. "How did you _know_? No one else knows!"

Nico doubts that. She hasn't seen much of Gert and Chase together, but she remembers how they acted in the forest. Anyone who's spent time around them must have noticed the way they look--and _don't_ look--at each other. And she's pretty sure that Alex, at least, has drawn his own conclusions about Gert and Chase keeping this place a secret, and making a new bed one of the first things they moved into it.

To Chase, Nico simply says, "I'm a witch. Witches know things."

"Oh. Huh. Okay." He frowns. "Wait. Gert is...also a witch."

"Yeah." Nico stares at him, watching the implications sink in. She almost wants to smile, but even the prospect of smiling exhausts her. Nico grips the back of the chair, fighting dizziness. "Gert is a witch."

"I will bear that in mind," Chase says carefully.

Nico nods. She gathers up the things on the chair, then walks to the door, willing her legs to remain steady.

"Oh, wait!" Nico looks back to see Chase taking yet another bundle from inside his doublet. "I, ah, when we found you, you had a sheathe, but no knife. And you don't have your staff, so...I made this for you. Here."

He unwraps the bundle, presenting Nico with a knife of silver-steel, with a series of runes etched into the blade and handle. Even by candlelight, it glows. The quality of the forging is superior to the knife she lost, even if the runework is less advanced. Or at least, less _deadly_ than the ancient runes Nico carved into her blade. 

Nico has never had to worry about money, but she suspects that Chase must have spent quite a bit on raw materials. The time and magic he's invested in the blade...it must be quite valuable. It occurs to Nico that money is likely to be something she’s going to have to worry about very soon. She knows that she should accept what is being offered, but she hesitates.

"Why?" Nico frowns at his earnest expression. "You don't owe me anymore. I...I owe you. For the food, and the hideout, and...everything."

"You saved our lives," Chase says, moving closer. He offers Nico the knife, handle first. "You saved us, and Alex...Alex almost got you killed. Believe me, Gert had quite a bit to say about _that_. We definitely owe you, if you want to put it that way."

Nico hesitates.

"Look..." Chase blows out a breath. "Gert and I...you're right. We're together. But we only got together after that wraith attacked us in the Old Forest. Turns out we've both been...feeling something for each other. For a while. But we were both too scared to make a move."

"What?" Nico turns to face him fully. Her heart, a traitor, speeds up, because her mind, a traitor, thinks about lips she could have kissed but didn’t. "Why?"

"You know...because!" He raises his eyebrows in expectation of an acknowledgement that Nico can’t give him. He blinks. "Oh. Right. You've lived alone in a forest most of your life. Uh, well...because it's scary, telling someone how you feel. It's scary not knowing how they'll react. It's scary to think they'll reject you. It's even a little scary to think that they'll accept you! Because then, everything might change. Hopefully for the better, but..."

"That...makes sense." Nico thinks about what's going to happen when she's strong enough to leave this place. She survived for so long in the Old Forest because she was able to adapt, but she was able to adapt because she had a clear, unwavering purpose to cling to. Nico doesn't have that now, she tells herself, no matter how often her mind is haunted by the ghost of golden hair and sweet smiles. Nico shakes her head. "You’re right. Change is...scary."

"Yeah." Chase grins. "But it can be good, too. Gert and I...it's good. Really good. And it wouldn't have happened if we hadn't almost died against that wraith. And we _would_ have died, if it wasn't for you. So I owe you for helping me and Gert make a good change. If I had something better to give you than a knife, I would. But this is all I've got, so...take it. Please?"

Nico swallows. She takes the knife from him, then she yanks the door open, and walks away as quickly as she can.

* * *

It takes her nearly ten minutes to find her way out of the lightless lodge and to the stream. She's tired when she gets there, but not exhausted. Nico's pleased that she's getting stronger, until she remembers that, once she's recovered, she'll have to make a decision about where to go.

Nico has no desire to let that thought take root, so she tries to clear it from her mind. She strips out of a dress she imagines must have been Molly's, and unwinds the bandages around her middle. Nico runs her fingers along the four, ragged, parallel claw wounds on her left side. There's a little pain, but she can deal with that. There's no sign of infection in the wound. In fact, there soon won't be a wound. Just a few more scars to add to the others she's accumulated over the years.

Nico snorts. For years, she hadn't cared about being thought beautiful. Scars were facts of a life spent battling for survival against monsters and belligerent trees. Scars were proof of her ability to endure, to adapt, to triumph. Nico only began to worry about her appearance when she'd been reunited with...

Karolina.

Nico's heart throbs painfully. Her stomach clenches, and she has to fight to keep from throwing up. Her eyes sting, and the world becomes blurry. Nico throws herself into the stream, plunging her face beneath the surface of the water. 

The stream is cold enough to have teeth and deep enough to swallow her. The pain as it bites down into her skin is almost welcome: it's just her flesh, after all, and pain is something that she can get used to, something she'll recover from. It might hurt, but it can't _wound_ her. 

Not the way that Karolina has. Nico doesn't think she could survive another wound, not to her heart. That wound is still bleeding, still waiting to be tended to, but Nico doesn't know any healing art that might fix it.

With her mouth hidden under the surface of the water, Nico can finally scream. With her tears being washed away as soon as they're shed, Nico can finally cry. When she needs air, she plants her feet on the streambed and heaves her head above the surface. She clings to the earthen bank at the water's edge, and lets herself mourn for what has passed, for what will never return, and for what she now knows can never be avenged.

* * *

Nico finds some kind of calm, lying in the stream after she’s washed. Her hair floats loose and free in the water, her skin feels clean and new, and if Nico feels hollow and numb after all her tears, she at least feels free of anger and of pain. 

In the water, with the black sky above, the lights of the Shining City glowing in the distance, the trees of the Old Forest looming on the far side of the stream, Nico feels...detached.

It isn't the same as feeling free, it isn't anything like _being_ free, but Nico welcomes it anyway. Somewhere between leaving the stream and returning to the lodge, Nico knows that all of her burdens will come back. But for now, Nico feels able to think without the weight of her problems rendering her thoughts to mulch.

It lets her confront the truth she’s known for days at last: Jonah is dead.

Jonah is dead, and he’s taken Nico’s only prospect of revenge with him. Revenge was the only reason Nico stayed here as long as she did, battling the monsters and the terrors of the Old Forest in the shadow of the Shining City. It isn’t a life she loved, but now that it’s been taken from her, Nico thinks that she at least did learn to love some of the trees. There are things that she’ll miss, but she can’t go back.

Nico has to try to move forward, but she doesn’t know how. It seems _impossible_ to imagine any life outside the forest, any life lived without hate to sustain her. There is nothing to keep her hate fresh anymore, and she can feel herself weakening as it rots inside her.

Nico has no purpose. She has nowhere to go.

She can't go to the Shining City. Even if she could find acceptance there, it's the last place that Nico would go looking for it. She's forced to wonder if Alex's offer of a home was another of his lies, or if he really believed that the people of the Shining City could forget that they'd feared Nico and made her their monster for nearly a decade.

For the first time, it occurs to Nico that Alex is as driven as she was by the desire to avenge himself. But he wants to bring down his own parents, and his hunger for it has made him blind in some important ways. Nico almost begins to feel sorry for him, and she doesn't want that. She lets the thought go, lets it float away on the lazy current of the stream.

His fight isn't hers. Nico doesn't have a fight of her own anymore. Nico doesn't have anything.

Perhaps it's time that she tried to change that. Perhaps tomorrow, if she’s feeling strong enough, Nico could go back to her campsite in the Old Forest and recover everything she can. She could find her staff, and she could go...somewhere.

Her thoughts refuse to cohere around a possible destination. Perhaps the thing to do is to pick a direction, and see where it takes her. Nico's thoughts begin to drift, considering possibilities. Inevitably, they carry her back to Karolina. It hurts, thinking about her. It hurts, thinking that Nico will never see her smile again.

"It's all tangled up," Nico confides to any trees that might be listening. "The good and the bad. Should I try to untangle it?"

There's no answer to that, at first. But her heart, wounded as it is, speeds up again. Nico sighs. "Okay."

Karolina had lied to her, just like Alex, by keeping back the truth. Only, Alex tricked her to further his own agenda, while Karolina had wanted Nico to feel safe. She had wanted to be Nico's friend. She had _become_ Nico’s friend. 

And Nico had kept things back, too. They _both_ had, and they both knew they were doing it. They had both trusted that they'd tell each other the truth eventually. They had both thought that they'd have more time. They'd both wanted it; Nico doesn't think that Karolina is a good enough liar to fake that.

Karolina’s lie hurt Nico, but can she really blame Karolina for lying the way she did? And what of all the other things they’d shared, not because of debt, but desire? Even now, as numb as she is, Nico’s thoughts turn more and more to Karolina, and they warm her. Nico wants to see her again. She _needs_ to see her again. To see her smile, to hear her laugh, to feel the warmth of her embrace, to breathe in her scent, to taste…

Nico closes her eyes as she touches her cold fingers to her lips.

For a moment, she lets herself imagine what might be. Then she forces herself to look at what is. Nico is too drained to scream, but she does groan when she confronts it. 

"I told her I hated her. I told her I never wanted to see her again. Why would she want to see me? When Alex and the others deal with their parents and free her mother, she'll be too busy for me, anyway. She'll forget me. Maybe she already has. Maybe I can forget her, too. That’s what I should do."

But Nico knows that she won't. How could she forget the feel of the sun on her skin or what it’s like to draw air into her lungs?

"I’m sorry. I forgive you. But...I wish I did hate you, Ka-Karolina. It would be easier. Goddess, I wish I hated _someone_! I wish Jonah was alive, so I could make him suffer. He shouldn't have just died. He should've suffered! He..."

Hate warms her, but only for a moment. Hate slips through her fingers before she can grasp it, floating away on the stream. Jonah is gone. And Karolina...Karolina is the Guardian of the Shining City. She has friends, a mother, a whole populace to protect. She will never leave, and Nico can't stay.

It hurts, thinking about Karolina. But now it feels less like the sting of betrayal than the ache of loss. Nico shivers. She's cold, cold right through to her marrow, but she still can't numb the feelings Karolina awakes in her.

"I have to go," she forces herself to growl through her chattering teeth. “She doesn’t need me. She can’t want me, not anymore. If she did, she’d have come to see me. I can’t go to her. I can’t _help_ her. I’m the Witch of the Woods, I can only hurt her.”

“I have to go,” Nico whispers, letting the stream carry away the last of her tears. “I have to go.”

She heaves herself out of the stream, stumbling when she has to bear the weight of her waterlogged hair. She hisses a spell on a tongue grown clumsy with cold, summoning a warm breeze to dry her. It's a simple spell, one that Amy taught her, and even without a staff, it doesn't tax Nico unduly.

When she's dry, she gets changed into her new clothes. Her new dress is made of velvet, dyed a deep blue. It feels wrong, but Nico supposes that she'll get used to it, along with all the other changes the next few days will bring.

* * *

Chase looks relieved when Nico comes back. She makes no apology for how long she was gone, and he doesn't ask about it. They eat together, Chase babbling about how tense things are in the city, how tense things have been between them all since Gert blew up at Alex, how it feels like, with the tablets Nico found, something will have to change soon, and he can only hope that it will be a good change.

Nico lets him talk. He doesn't bring up Karolina, and she doesn't ask. She lets him talk, until there's no food left, and then she tells him she's going to sleep.

He leaves her alone in the darkness. Nico lets it wash over her, trying not to think as she sinks into sleep, hoping that she won't dream.

* * *

"We need to talk, Nico."

Nico blinks away the remnants of her nightmare, squinting through the morning light to find Gert staring down at her, her hands on her hips.

"What...?"

"Come on, get up. I brought food. I'll be outside."

Nico climbs out of bed, puts on her dress, and takes the knife that Chase gave her from under her pillow. She puts on her old belt, the only piece of clothing that survived her fight with the shadow thing, and slips the knife into it.

The hunting lodge is bigger--and more decrepit--than Nico had realised last night. The morning light shows her a large central hall and several doors to other rooms. Nico has no desire to investigate another abandoned building. She walks outside, pleased to find her legs are steady and her body feels rested. 

Gert is sitting on the grass beside a wicker hamper, facing the trees of the Old Forest a few hundred yards away. Gert nods at her when Nico sits down, putting the hamper between them. "How do you feel?"

Nico shrugs. "Better. I'll be moving on soon."

"Back to the Old Forest?" Gert sounds surprised.

"Yes." Nico hesitates. She opens the hamper, trying to buy herself a moment to think. She doesn't need to lie to Gert, she supposes. Not anymore. Silence and secrecy have been her ways for so long, though, that it's hard to be any other way. But in spite of Chase’s claims to the contrary, Nico owes Gert and the others a debt for saving her. Maybe Nico can pay what she owes in truth. "I won’t stay in the Old Forest for long, though. I'm...leaving. Moving on."

"What? _Why_? If this is because Alex was such a--"

"No." Nico's fingers pause on an orange. She raises it to her nose, inhaling the fragrance. "I can't stay. And I don't need to. I was...going to kill the Guardian. Jonah. He killed...my family, so..." Nico swallows. She peels the orange, hoping Gert won't notice that her hands are shaking. "But he's dead. He just _died_ , and...there's no point in my being here. Not now. So. I'm leaving. Tomorrow."

She glares at Gert, prepared for an argument, but the other girl is gazing into the distance.

"Nico..." Gert shakes her head. She turns her body, facing Nico. "There are things you don't know. There are things you _need_ to know, before you make any decisions."

"I don't want to hear--'

"Jonah did not _just_ die. That's what Karolina told you?"

"She told me got sick and died." Nico's hands bunch into fists, crushing the orange. "She lied? _Again_?" Nico tosses the orange away. "I'm leaving today."

"Idiots! Both of them! What Alex did was cruel, but Karolina...?" Gert sighs. "She's so _stupid_ sometimes!"

Nico stares at her, unwilling to ask but hungry to know what she means.

Gert frowns at her. “She asks about you every day. She was...she was _devastated_ when you got hurt.”

Nico flinches and looks down at her hands. “She hasn’t come to visit me…” she mutters.

“That’s because she thinks you hate her!” Gert groans. “ _And_ because she’s an _idiot_! Nico, Karolina _wants_ to see you, she’s just scared that you’ll--”

“It doesn’t matter,” Nico snaps, clenching her shaking hands into fists. Her skin is sticky with fragrant juice. “I have to go. I _can’t_ stay.”

"Here." Gert takes a napkin from the hamper and passes it to Nico. "For your hands. Will you...at least hear me out? Please? Listen to my story, and then...all debts are paid. Okay? You can leave afterwards, if you want, and not owe anyone anything."

"Deal," Nico says quickly. Too quickly, maybe. Gert is promising her a clean break, but Nico knows that she’s trying to trap Nico somehow. And yet...Nico wipes the orange juice from her skin and meets Gert’s expectant gaze. "Tell me what I don't know."

* * *

Gert hated Karolina from the moment she saw her. 

Karolina was another tall, pretty girl with perfect skin and hair, someone who knew how to smile, how to dance, how to sit, how to stand, and how to be the perfect, obedient little lady. The Shining City was full of them, and exactly none of them were friends of Gert’s. 

Oh, but Karolina was a _little_ different. She had wealthy, famous parents, she had travelled extensively, she had learned how to act a dozen different roles in a theatre troupe, but she only knew how to behave _one_ way. She was always obedient, always polite, always _smiling_.

Karolina was different from the nobles girls of Gert’s acquaintance: she was _worse_. Gert hated her even before she noticed the way Chase would gawk at her whenever they were in the same room.

Which was far too often, because everyone's parents forced Karolina into their circle of friends. And she was so easy to hate, because she was so tall and pretty and perfect, but she was hard to hate up close, too, because Karolina was always polite, always friendly, always _smiling_. It had to be an act, but it was so easy to forget that when Karolina was smiling at you.

Gert did her best to keep away from Karolina, so that she could keep her hate fresh. But there were only so many excuses that could be made to avoid spending time with her, especially when Molly was so keen to get to know the new girl.

So Gert got to know Karolina, and realised that she wasn't acting at all. She was every bit as nice as she appeared to be. Gert managed to find things to hate about her anyway, because that was and is one of Gert's greatest talents, but after some time had passed, she came to accept that she didn't hate Karolina herself. That she _couldn't_ hate her, anymore than she could hate the sun for rising too early. She might not love the sun as much as other people did, but it was still the sun!

Things got better between them, the day Gert caught Karolina kissing Julie in the back of her parents' new theatre. It hadn’t lasted, with Julie, because Karolina was always an idiot when she was in love, but a bond was forged between Gert and Karolina that _did_ last. 

On the day she promised never to tell anyone about Julie, Karolina had smiled, and Gert had learned that Karolina’s true smile was brighter than the ones she’d become used to, and warmer than the summer sun.

It stayed a secret between them, that Karolina didn't like boys, until Karolina was ready for other people to know. Gert kept that secret safely tucked away in a space between her ribs, even when it pressed down on her lungs at those times when Chase would offer Karolina his cloak in the rain, or his hand so she could step down from their carriage. It hurt, even knowing that Karolina couldn’t want him--maybe all the more because he was _Chase_ and Karolina didn’t _want_ him. It hurt, to keep that secret, but it was the beginning of their friendship, and Gert didn’t want to betray that.

And in the end, Karolina didn’t betray _her_. She noticed Gert’s pain one day, and she said nothing to Gert, but she said something to Chase. She told him that it wasn’t right to offer his hand to Karolina when they were getting out of a carriage and not to offer it to Gert and to Molly, too. Karolina insisted that he help them first, but after Chase would help Gert, Molly would jump out of the carriage and help Karolina. 

And Karolina would smile her true smile at Gert, who would find herself standing in the road holding Chase’s hand.

Eventually, Karolina refused his hand enough times that Chase _only_ offered it to Gert. Karolina would always smile, and always find a way to deftly turn him away when he pursued her, always turning him into Gert’s path. And then one day it had rained, and Chase had _stepped around_ Karolina to offer his cloak to Gert. Karolina had met Gert's eye and smiled so _happily_. Even though Gert’s face was burning, that was the moment that Gert had learned to love the sun.

So when the truth came out, that Jonah was Karolina's father, Gert found it easier than she would have imagined to rush to Karolina's side and offer to help however she could. As Karolina's parents fought in public, their marriage collapsing, Karolina's _world_ collapsing, Gert took pride in the way that she and Molly and Chase and Alex did their best to make a stable space for their friend.

And when Jonah discovered he had a daughter, and the Ruling Council began to take a keen interest in Karolina, the five of them began to discover a great many secrets that their parents had been hiding. They began to worry about Karolina, and how being the Guardian's daughter might make her a target of the council. They began to make plans to protect Karolin, to protect the whole city from their parents.

The first time Karolina's skin glowed, on stage at what became her last performance in her parents’ theatre, Gert's worries condensed into fear. Karolina had inherited the Guardian's powers through his blood. Years of proximity to the crystal core had awakened them, and when the city learned that Karolina could manipulate the crystal core, just like the Guardian, Gert and her friends knew that Karolina's life was in danger.

Jonah wanted to be with his daughter, to connect with her. His interest in her took his focus from his other concerns, and the Ruling Council--Gert's own parents, who she’d always thought as sweet and harmlessly eccentric, among them--were quick to take advantage. They locked Karolina's mother away, hiding her somewhere even the Guardian couldn’t reach. They banned Karolina from learning about her newfound powers. They banned her from leaving the boundaries of the city.

Gert did what she could, which was very little. She tried to reach Karolina magical theory, tried to help her understand her powers. Gert wonders, even now, if what she taught Karolina made a difference. She sometimes hopes that it didn't, because then she'd be partly guilty of what Karolina was forced to do in the end.

The Ruling Council thought that they had Jonah under their thumb at last. They thought that by holding Karolina's mother and that by threatening Karolina, they could make Jonah do as they wished. And this is a truth: Jonah _was_ sick. His was a sickness of the mind, though, maybe a sickness of the spirit. Because when Jonah was forced to choose between power and family, he chose to tear the whole city down and build a new one instead.

Gert remembers the day the Guardian decreed the Shining City's doom. She remembers how bright he was, as he strode through the city, tearing buildings down with his power. How he scattered the Radiant Guard with waves of light, laughing at their helplessness. Gert remembers the screams of the hurt and the dying. She remembers _screaming_ , until her throat was raw.

Gert remembers how her parents tried to mount a defence against Jonah, and how it failed. Gert remembers how the Ruling Council panicked, and fell apart, and tried to take their children and flee. Gert remembers holding Molly, hiding behind a fountain in the Moon Plaza, while her parents bickered about how best to load the carriage they hoped to flee in.

Gert remembers Jonah's light, filling the plaza. She remembers how he stepped into view, smiling, his eyes calm, his hands red with blood.

She remembers how it felt, to know that she was going to die.

She remembers how Karolina ran into the plaza, and threw herself between Jonah and Gert. She remembers Jonah offering to spare her. She remembers how Karolina begged him to stop.

She remembers Jonah refusing. She remembers Karolina throwing a magical blast at him that drove him to one knee.

Gert will never forget how they fought, each of them growing brighter and brighter, unleashing more magic than she'd ever thought it possible for two people to wield in the space of a minute, every minute, for over an hour.

Gert will never forget the look on Jonah’s face at the end. She’ll never forget the look on Karolina’s in the moment that she saved the Shining City.

In the moment when Karolina used her power to kill her own father.

* * *

Nico remembers that day in the woods, the day she watched the Guardian fight someone and knew she didn't have the power to oppose him. The day she fled deeper into the forest, running from the Guardian. She'd really been running from Karolina. She had fled the battle she had spent her life working towards, but Karolina hadn't run. She had stood against her own father, she had stood against the full power of the Guardian, and she had won.

Karolina had won, but what did she lose in the process? What price did she have to pay? What price is she _still_ paying, because of the actions of the adults in her life?

Nico thinks about Karolina's sadness, and sees it so much more clearly. Behind the kindness of her eyes, the dazzling radiance of her smiles, there were those moments when her eyes were downcast, when her lips were turned down. What had she said? That she only had four friends, and she was tired of seeing the pity in their eyes?

Nico can feel tears sitting heavy on _her_ eyes. She blinks, swiping her cheeks quickly with her palm. "They don't love her, in your city? She saved them. How can they not love her?"

"No, Nico," Gert says wearily, "they don't love her. They hate her, or they fear her, because...because they think she'll end up just like Jonah. And the council...our parents forced Karolina into the role of the Guardian, but they've promised everyone in the city that they'll curb her power. They say they'll control her, because Karolina _can't_ be trusted. Karolina isn't allowed anywhere near her mother. She isn't allowed to go far from the city. She isn't allowed direct access to the crystal core. She isn't allowed training."

Gert sighs. She meets Nico's eye. "Our parents look at Karolina and see a tool. A resource to be exploited. She's been so unhappy, Nico. Except...except, lately. Since she met you, I've seen her smile like she used to. She talks about you, and she _laughs_! And I don't think I've _ever_ seen her so scared as she was when she thought that...thing had mortally wounded you."

Nico has always known she was a coward, and she is a coward now. She can't face the things that Gert is saying, not now. She can't face her own voice, whispering over and over in the back of her mind: _I hate you. I never want to see you again._ Instead, she clears her throat and says, "If your parents see her as someone to exploit, how is that different from the way Alex treated me?"

"It...what does that matter? Alex was wrong! Believe me, I know! But if you're so angry about what he did, why aren't you angry about what's happening to Karolina? Are you going to pretend that you don’t care? Because I _know_ that you do."

"I..." Nico looks away. She makes a fist in the grass, uprooting several blades. In a low voice she mutters, "What do you want from me? What do you think _I_ can do?"

"I think you care about Karolina. I _think_ you can be her friend. She was scared you'd die before we could get to you, she was _terrified_ she'd lose you. She’s being a complete idiot, avoiding you now, because--"

"She lied to me!" Nico is on her feet, fists clenched, but it isn't anger she's feeling. Not really. It's shame and guilt and a terrible ache that she recognises as a _need_ to see Karolina again. "I don’t want to be just her...but I can’t! And I gave up--" Nico clamps her jaws shut, shaking her head. She takes a ragged breath, then sighs it out. "I'm tired. I'm going back to bed."

"Wait!" Gert climbs quickly to her feet. "What do you mean? What do you want to be? What did you give up? Why are you really leaving, Nico?"

"Because! I promised the trees I'd leave the forest forever! And I will _never_...I'll never set foot in the Shining City. I can't stay. And Karolina can't leave. Even if you free her, even if you get rid of your parents, why would Karolina leave? She has a mother! She has friends! She has a...home. And after what I said to her..."

"Nico--"

"She isn't losing me," Nico says, all the strength draining out of her voice and her body. "I already lost her."

"Okay, no, come on! _You're_ being an idiot now! I’m trying to tell you--"

"Gert! Nico!"

Alex comes sprinting towards them, appearing from around a corner of the hunting lodge. He comes to a halt beside them, breathing hard, his face shiny with sweat.

"Alex?" Gert glances at Nico. "I thought we agreed you wouldn't take a watch tonight?"

"Doesn't matter," Alex pants, waves Gert’s words away. "They found the tablets. They arrested Karolina."

"What? _How_?"

Nico feels ice touch her heart. "What are you talking about? If this is another trick--"

"No!" Alex shakes his head frantically. "Karolina wasn't subtle the other day, when she--"

"When she saved me," Nico whispers, ice spreading through her veins.

"Yes. When she saved you. And all those times she met you, too. Our parents knew something was going on. They’ve been watching--"

"Do _not_ try to blame Nico for any of this, Alex!" Gert glares up at him, her fists on her hips. "Just tell us what happened. Without commentary."

"I'm trying to! They announced that Karolina has been arrested for conspiring with the Witch of the Woods! And they have a witness. Eiffel saw the two of you together. She came forward after Karolina lit up half the countryside killing that thing. And our parents started watching us, and they figured out where I'd stashed the tablets, and they're _gone_!" Alex draws in a breath. "I think they took them last night. I think they know exactly what they have. I think we've given them the key to controlling the crystal core directly, and they know it, because..."

"Because?" Gert snaps. "Alex, by all the Gods, if you don't hurry--"

"They charged Karolina with treason, Gert. Her trial is going to be this afternoon. And she’ll be found guilty, our parents will see to that." Alex seems to shrink in on himself. His hands clutch at the warm, empty air. "Our parents are going to execute Karolina."

Gert is rendered wordless perhaps, though it's hard to say because all Nico can hear is a crystalline ringing in her ears as her mind and body freeze.

Karolina is going to...die?

Nico has been trying to get used to the idea that she would never see Karolina again, but she never imagined that it might be because Karolina wouldn't exist anymore. She tries to imagine a world without Karolina's smile in it, but her mind recoils from the notion.

A voice in her head whispers, _What better vengeance on Jonah than letting his daughter die?_

Nico shivers. She shivers, because she can feel a fire bloom inside her, she can feel the ice immobilising her begin to thaw. Sound returns to her, and she can hear Gert and Alex arguing, though she can't attach any meaning to the sounds that they're making.

Nico forces herself to take a deep breath. The air seems to burn in her lungs, and Nico feels the ice inside her crack, freeing up her throat, allowing her to express what her entire being demands.

"No," Nico says softly.

As quiet as she is, it puts an end to Gert and Alex’s argument.

"No? Nico!" Alex puts his hand on her shoulder, and she's too distracted to make him regret it. "Karolina's in real trouble! I can't believe you'd refuse to help her. If we're going to save her--"

"No," Nico murmurs, brushing his hand away. “No.”

Karolina was right. Nico has made too many promises, and she can't possibly keep them all. She has to choose which ones she'll keep and which ones she'll break, and the choice is suddenly so clear, so simple, so easy, it leaves her dazed. _Everything_ seems so simple now. Nothing is tangled up anymore, lost in the briars. Good is Karolina existing in the world. The alternative... 

Nico shivers again. "No."

"Nico, please," Gert says, "we're going to need your help--"

"No," Nico says calmly. She rolls her shoulders and stretches her limbs. The doubts that have assailed her for days now all fall away, because she knows what she has to do. And she knows exactly how she's going to do it. “They won't hurt her."

"You don't know our parents! They will _kill_ her, because now they don't need her! We gave them the tablets! We… _I_ underestimated them. I...Gods forgive me, I _gave_ them the key to the crystal core. They’re going to--" Alex shakes his head. He throws up his hands. "We're wasting time! We need to go! Nico, you can come with us or you can run aw--"

" _No_ , Alex. You’re wrong. They won't kill her." Nico flexes her hand, and shouts, " _AS ONE!_ "

Alex and Gert stare at her, confused, until a hissing sound reaches their ears. Alex and Gert flinch when a dark shape bursts from the treeline, rushing towards them swifter than an arrow. Nico smiles and raises her hand. Her staff drops into her waiting palm, a hunting hawk returned to its keeper.

"Your parents _won't_ kill Karolina,” Nico hisses. Inside Nico a furnace is blazing. Alex and Gert slowly back away from her as she draws deep from the well of her fury and her power, bringing her magic to life. “The cowards in your city won't hurt her again. None of them will do _anything_ else to my...friend. I promised to protect Karolina, and I'm going to keep that promise. And no wall, no army, no power of any kind will stop me."

Alex and Gert exchange a worried look.

Gert says, “Nico, maybe we should discuss this?”

“Ah…yeah.” Alex clears his throat. "Come with us, we'll show you how to sneak into the city. I have the beginnings of a plan, too, so we can talk things over on the--"

"No," Nico says again. "I already have a plan."

She strides to the edge of the stream, using her staff to vault across it. She ignores Alex and Gert’s questions behind her. She walks towards the Old Forest, and drives the tip of her staff into the soil at the edge of the treeline.

" _HEAR ME!_! You know me. I am the one who has chased off charcoal burners and woodcutters, the one who has cut blights from your trunks, planted your seeds and acorns, hunted the things that sharpened their claws on your bark. I am the one who brought peace when your root systems were at war! I am the one who raised the youngest of you from saplings to trees in the rich earth that bathes in the light of the walls of the Shining City."

Nico pauses for breath. Behind her, she can feel Alex and Gert's mute wonder, because in front of her, the trees raise their limbs in salute.

"I told you the day would come when I would ask you to repay your debts. I told you all what I would need you to do." Nico licks her lips. "Today is the day. The time is now. All debts are due, all debts will be paid. You know what I need you to do. I need it now. _NOW _!"__

__Nico waits. At first, she feels nothing. And then, a slow trickle of power as roots realign themselves, tangle together and spread themselves out like a causeway under the earth. The trees of the Old Forest, her allies, her friends--her only family for ten years--answer to her call, weaving a path from their roots that extends from the depths of the forest to the Shining City itself._ _

__And along that path, power flows. Quantities of black magic from the sap of thousands of trees, black magic that accumulates, that becomes a river, then a flood, streaming towards the Shining City._ _

__She turns to Gert and Alex. She can see from the pained look on Gert's face that the witch has sensed the vast amount of energy that Nico has commanded into motion. She can see from the look on Alex's face that even he feels some echo of the black power gathering momentum beneath their feet._ _

__"I'm going to cut through the woods," Nico says, her voice as strong and steady as her heart and her limbs. "You should sneak back in and do what you need to do to stop your parents. Don't worry about the Radiant Legion. They'll be busy."_ _

__"Nico," Alex shakes his head, his eyes wide. "What...what is _your_ plan?"_ _

__"I’m going to my camp to get the things I’ve spent ten years preparing. And then..." Nico raises her staff. The trees of the Old Forest bend their trunks and branches, clearing a path for her to walk through. "I'll show the people of the Shining City why they were always right to be afraid of me."_ _

__Nico turns her back on them before they can question her further, and strides into the Old Forest one last time._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading folks! 
> 
> And sorry to keep you waiting. I got massively derailed for a while, and then, once I was getting back into this, I lost the WIP with 5,000 words of this chapter and all my notes for the end of the fic. Which was a bit pants. But I decided to embrace the opportunity to completely redo my approach to this part of the story, and I think it's much better for it. I think it also led to a natural breaking point, so instead of the oft promised final chapter, there's...yet one more to go! And this really, truly will be the last one. And it'll be before your eyes in less than two months this time, I promise.
> 
> And now, it's my favourite part! Over to you, folks: please let me know your thoughts, whatever they may be! Comments are the dark magic flowing through my sap!


	6. The Road

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I know I said this would be the last chapter, and...it is. It took a while, but here we are at the end. I hope you like it.

In the thousand years that the Shining City has stood, it has been guarded by the Radiant Gate. The gate is really two gates set in a masonry, each a thick slab of spell-crafted alloy, carved with thousands of intricate protective runes that are empowered by the Shining City's crystal core. It is designed to repel magical and physical attacks, to lay bare glamours and illusions, to withstand any enemy, even time. Fire cannot burn it, siege engines and battering rams cannot break it, the most powerful destructive spells known to the modern world cannot unmake it.

War has come to the Shining City many times in the last thousand years, but the Radiant Gate has never been breached.

The walls that surround the gate are almost as strong. There are so many spells layered into it, woven so densely together, it would take a lifetime's work to identify all of the different kinds of magic contained in a single stone. The walls prevent even scrying magic from getting into the city. The walls are so smooth they are impossible to climb. The walls repair themselves every day without the need of a mason's attention, and could continue to do so forever, as long as the Guardian is there to ensure that the crystal core feeds them enough power.

War has come to the Shining City rarely in recent centuries, because the walls of the Shining City have never been breached.

An army equipped with enchanted siege engines, with a battalion of wizards and witches to support them, might hope to break the walls or force open the gate, given enough time. But the Guardian and the Radiant Legion exist to ensure that no invading force will have enough time to create such a breach, and that any who try will be sorely punished for attempting it.

No invader has made war on the Shining City in living memory, because all the world knows that the Shining City has never been breached.

Once the Radiant Gate is closed, not even the legendary Witch of the Woods could hope to magic it open again, let alone break it down. And Nico is, in many ways, far less than her legend. Behind the protection of the walls and the Radiant Gate, the people of the Shining City believe themselves safe from outside harm. And in a thousand years, no one who has stood before the Radiant Gate has threatened that belief. Even without the Guardian, no one would imagine that a single witch, however powerful, could threaten the city where it is strongest.

For this is an idea that has calcified into a known truth: only a fool would wage war on the Shining City, because once the Radiant Gate is sealed, the Shining City cannot be breached.

* * *

Nico strides out of the Old Forest with the power of the trees humming beneath her feet and gourds of manticore venom slung about her body. Her staff is in her hand. Chase's knife is in her belt. Her midnight-dyed dress is snug on her body, cloaking her in darkness and distraction.

In spite of the magic that surrounds her, in spite of all her years of preparation, Nico's fear sounds louder and louder in her temples with every step she takes closer to the Shining City. In spite of her resolve to save Karolina, fear makes her heart thunder, fear dances through her belly like a summer storm, fear fills her mouth with a taste like hot copper.

Nico is afraid that she'll be too slow, too foolish, too weak, and that Karolina will suffer the consequences. Nico approaches the boundary stone, and memories of Karolina bloom in her mind, masking her fear. She tells herself that she's had ten years to prepare for this moment. She tells herself that the Guardian isn't going to oppose her. She tells herself that she won't fail.

Nico can't fail, because Karolina needs her. Nico can't fail, because she needs Karolina.

"I am what they fear," Nico whispers as she walks past the boundary stone, onto the surface of the road, towards the Radiant Gate itself, and the guards who stand in front of it, and on the battlements above it. "I'm not afraid, because today I _am_ fear."

She lets the darkness her dress wraps her in dissipate a hundred yards from the gate, just before the city's defences strip it from her. She smiles, in spite of everything, when the alarm is sounded and the Radiant Legion retreat to the safety of their walls and the Radiant Gate is slammed shut. She smiles, because she knows then that they really _are_ afraid of her.

A red-haired guardswoman standing on the rampart above the gate stares down at her. A huge man whose armour glows, washing his black skin in a dozen different colours, stands impassively at her side.

The guard glances at him, then licks her lips and addresses Nico. "Halt! I-identify yourself!"

"Don't you know me?" Nico's voice is a rasp. She raises her voice, so that all of them can hear her, but she locks eyes with the man who can only be Alex's father, the commander of the Legion. "You know me. You all know me. I am The One Who Walks In Darkness, The Slayer of Hope, The Last Voice Heard In The Shadows." Nico takes a step forward and plants her staff on the road in front of her. "I am The Witch Of The Woods."

"Wh-what..." The woman swallows. "What is your purpose here?"

"I...am The Guardian's friend. Karolina's friend. I want you to bring me my friend, unharmed. I'll leave you alone, if you do that."

Whispering reaches her ears. Laughter, too. More of them are gathering on the walls above, the Radiant Legion with their enchanted armour and spears. Archers, too, with arrows knocked to bowstrings that hum with magic. They wait only on the word of Alex's father to let fly.

Beneath her feet, Nico can feel the power of the Old Forest swelling. It isn't what she needs, not yet. The magic invested in the walls and the foundations of the Radiant City is pushing against the invading force, making it sluggish. Nico needs more time, or else the ten long years in lonely darkness will have served only to delay the moment that she dies in the shadowless space before the Radiant Gate.

Nico's magic might allow her to survive the first flight of arrows, perhaps even the second, but sooner or later a gap will open in her defences and she'll be hit. And not long after that, she'll be dead. Luckily, she has a shield more powerful than any conjuring of hers could create: the arrogance of the Great Prism of the Radiant Legion.

He raises his hand and the guards crowding the sections of wall above and on either side of the gate--more than fifty in number, and still growing as word spreads--fall silent.

"So, you're the fabled Witch of the Woods," Alex's father drawls. "You're nothing more than a child! I guess the stories about you were always just that: stories. There's no reason for anyone to be afraid of you."

It's clear to Nico that he isn't. It's clear to her, judging from the expressions on their faces that quite a few of the Radiant Legion _are_ afraid of her. But not all of them. Not enough of them. Too many are emboldened by her youth, and by the Great Prism's derision.

Which, for the moment, suits her well.

Nico waits a breath, then two, to allow time for his words to take root in his soldiers hearts, to let his certainty encourage them. Only then does Nico part her lips and say, "For her sake, for her kind heart alone, I say again: release Karolina to me."

"Not just a child, but a fool," the Great Prism's voice booms out, drowning Nico's. "Your words just sealed Karolina's fate. There can be no doubt now that she's a traitor to this city! A traitor to _our people_! To conspire with a practitioner of black magic? To befriend an enemy of our city? Our _home_?" He spreads his arms, which are long and thick with muscle. "We know our duty. We _all_ know the price of treason! We won't be doing anything you ask of us, witch. If you surrender, and stand witness against Karolina, you'll be granted leniency at your own trial. Defy us, and you will die alongside her!"

They roar for him, a hundred or more of the Radiant Legion, crowded thickly onto the iridescent walls of the Shining City. They roar for his _courage_ in condemning Karolina and Nico to death, they roar out their fear of her and suck in lungfuls of air to ignite their anger and their hate. In a matter of moments, Alex's father has tempered their insecurity into sharp purpose. Nico will die, Karolina will die, and none will ever question the rightness of it.

Nico thinks she understands Alex's talents for manipulation better now. She doesn't know if she'll ever forgive him, but she knows that without his example she could never have managed this next part. Laughter bubbles up out of her stomach, emerging in a giggle that makes her sound exactly like the child the Great Prism imagines her to be. It proves more effective in silencing the Radiant Legion than any shout or curse or spell of Nico's would have been.

"The great and terrible Witch of the Woods!" Alex's father sneers. "Her mind's snapped. Landelle, take your cohort. Descend the wall with ropes. No need to take any unnecessary risks. Bring me the witch. Alive, for preference."

The woman who first challenged Nico is already moving, pushing her way through the press of soldiers who have come to see the spectacle of the Witch of the Woods faced down by their commander. Landelle pauses, though, when Nico raises her voice.

"Great Prism of the Radiant Legion! I'm laughing because you accused Karolina of conspiring with a wielder of black magic. And that's what you call treason?" Nico slowly raises her staff, pointing the tip of it at him. She smiles, even when she hears the scrape of metal and the creak of bowstrings as dozens of weapons are aimed at her. Alex's father frowns at her, but he gives no signal. "I know you don't fear the Witch of the Woods. But I think you should fear _me_ , Great Prism. Because I had another name once."

His brow furrows, though his eyes remain untroubled. He believes himself beyond her reach.

Nico blows out a breath, then takes another step forward. Her voice is somehow steady when she says, "I am Nico Minoru. I am the little girl who crawled away from this gate, after your Guardian murdered my family. Will you tell any of your soldiers why he did that? Or should I tell them of the conspiracy you and your council formed with my mother--"

"I won't hear this," he snaps, his voice cracking. His eyes grow wide, and to see the first hint of fear in him is a sweetness Nico savours. "I won't hear these lies. Your poison tongue has sealed your fate. Archers!"

Confusion ripples through the Radiant Legion. Some of the archers hesitate, confused by the sudden change in orders. Others prove more disciplined, but when they try to raise their bows, Nico only has to raise her voice to make them pause.

"See?" Nico sweeps her gaze across the ranks of soldiers. "He calls me child, but trembles at the sound of my name. Is it my lies he fears, or is it the truths I know which scare him?"

"You will be SILENT!" He licks his lips, darting glances at the people around him. "I do not fear you. No one here fears you, little girl! Landelle! Bring her to me. Archers...if she tries anything, cut her down!"

"You do fear me," Nico says, tightening her grip on her staff. Beneath her feet, everything is in place. It's time. "You _should_. And you will regret this day for as long as you draw breath, if you don't take this last chance: give me Karolina. Now."

"Or what?" He isn't sneering, but his confidence is returning to him after her family name dealt it a blow. It isn't hard to see why, given where he stands. He pats the merlon in front of him. "Your magic is useless here. All you can do is surrender, or die. You've brought doom on your head, little girl."

"No,” Nico says, raising her voice so that all the soldiers gathering on the walls can hear her. She spreads her arms, lifting her staff into the air. "Your walls are strong, but I know something stronger, that has stood for so much longer. You thought to one day end it, but this day, it will be the end of you."

"Riddles now?" He smirks when Landelle shoves her way to the wall, a coil of rope around her shoulder. The Great Prism nods to her. "No unnecessary risks. Archers. Aim for her legs. Let's see if the Witch of the Woods really does bleed sap."

The archers bend their bows, but Nico has been a string under tension for ten whole years, finally being granted release. Before a single shaft can be loosed, Nico slams her staff onto the road and screams, "RUIN!"

Woven into that word is every scrap of ancient destruction magic Nico has gleaned from her time in the Old Forest. Spells designed to break protective shields, rip apart defensive magics, shatter stone, and rend metal. Her spell hits a section of wall to the left of the Radiant Gate, causing a huge flare of light as the wards activate.

The wards activate, and every fragment of Nico's spell is rendered useless before it can so much as scratch the surface. All she achieves after years of labour on that spell is to leave a tiny gap in the wall's magical defenses, a gap that the magic of the Shining City is already repairing.

Alex's father bursts out laughing. He waves his hand and says, "Cripple the little fool!"

The archers draw back their bow strings, but Nico merely laughs and spreads her arms. She has waited ten years for this moment, for a moment that has nothing to do with saving Karolina or avenging her family and everything to do with the frightened, angry child who crawled away from this gate, knowing it was forever sealed to her.

The Radiant Gate has never been breached, but then, no one but Nico in the last thousand years had ever thought to ask the Old Forest to attempt it.

The ground shivers, causing the walls to tremble as the first archers loose their arrows. Their shots go wide, almost as wide as the eyes of the people on the walls become as the first black root punches through the stone of the road and reaches out like a cat's claw, digging into the glowing masonry where Nico's spell had struck, burrowing in through the tiny gap she left. And, once the root has dug its way into the wall, it begins to pump black magic from the heart of the forest into it, attacking the integrity of magic and masonry alike.

The gap that Nico created widens as the radiant magic recoils from a source of power alien and antithetical to it. And as the gap widens, more black roots burst from the earth and fasten on the wall. The walls glow bright, brighter, as radiant magic floods into the affected area and tries to drive the intrusive force out. Which is what Nico expected would happen, and is what the burrowing roots have awaited.

The trees of the Old Forest are used to drinking magic for sustenance. The trees of the Old Forest know where the woodcutters and charcoal burners who attack the weakest trees at the edges of the forest come from. The trees of the Old Forest, especially the ones that Nico has planted and encouraged over the last decade, have had quite some time to send their roots questing out, under the surface of the road, to the foundations of the walls of the Shining City. The trees of the Old Forest, at Nico's urging, have developed a taste for the magic in those walls, though until now they have only sipped at it. Now, when the power of the Shining City floods into the invading roots, the trees of the Old Forest drink greedily, draining the protective magics of their strength.

Above them, Alex's father stares in horror, his jaw slack, as the Radiant Gate groans, shudders and begins to fail. More roots burst from the ground and dig into the walls, into the gate posts, into the Radiant Gate itself. They feast hungrily on the light magic, leaching the power from the spells, stripping layer upon layer of protective magic away, climbing higher and higher up the walls as more roots, imbued with the black power Nico has called from the deeper forest, rip their way free of the earth and latch onto the dimming walls.

It had always been Nico's plan to draw the Guardian out this way, because only the Guardian could redirect the power of the crystal core to shore up the city's magical defences before they could be ripped away entirely. Nico had thought that she would likely do little lasting damage, as long as the Guardian was there. And since all she had wanted in the long forgotten age of a month ago was to draw the Guardian to her, Nico hadn't cared.

But the only Guardian the Shining City has now is locked away, and Nico is here to save her. Which means that the only thing that can prevent the roots of the Old Forest feasting on the Radiant Gate is the Radiant Legion.

Alex's father starts bellowing orders, trying to direct his warriors to attack the roots, forgetting Nico for the moment as he battles two more dangerous enemies: the Old Forest and the panic spreading through his soldiers. Their fear is written on their faces, in their babbling voices, in the way they shove and pull at each other in their haste to flee or join the fight.

Nico draws a gourd of powdered manticore venom from her sling. In a concentrated dose, it can drive a person insane with terror before it eventually kills them. The dilute mixture in Nico's gourds won't be fatal, but it will quickly plunge its victims into a waking nightmare that will strip them of their ability to reason for at least a few hours.

Nico touches the gourd to the tip of her staff and says, "Disperse."

The gourd cracks open along the seams Nico spent hours carefully into each one of them, and the powder inside is blown out by a magical wind that carries it up, spreading the black flecks into a cloud that lifts itself over a section of the wall before it rains its venom down.

Against the protective spells of the Shining City, Nico's little trick would have failed. But with those protections being torn apart by the roots of Old Forest, Nico and her staff's power is more than enough. It only takes seconds for the Radiant Legion soldiers touched by the powder to feel its effects. Shouts and screams ring out, drowning their commander's voice as terror grips the mind of the affected.

Alex's father glares down at Nico. He bellows another command, but it's cut short when a _crack_ is followed by a fissure opening up in the masonry on the right side of the Radiant Gate. The parapet above lurches, throwing Alex's father off his feet.

The roots of the Old Forest's trees burrow into the gap in the stones, squeezing and tearing and straining to make the gap bigger.

Nico laughs and launches another gourd of venom, and another, and another. A few archers manage to loose their arrows at her, but Nico only has to flick her staff to summon a wind that sweeps them away.

Within a minute, the Radiant Legion is in full retreat, abandoning the gate and their pride as fear consumes even those who avoided Nico's venom. Over the course of that minute, more cracks open in the walls, stone crumbles, merlons topple, and the black roots of the Old Forest climb to the very top of the crenellations. For another minute, Nico watches in awe as roots fasten onto the walls like a horde of black leeches. For a moment, the walls around her are invisible, their light extinguished. And then the roots retreat, returning to the earth where the belong. The roots retreat, but they don't relinquish their grip on the walls, which are torn down like ancient, musty curtains being yanked down in a house soon to be demolished.

Nico is buffeted by the displaced air and her ears are almost deafened by the groans of breaking stone, the crash and thud of falling stone, the slithering rattle of stone falling on stone. And then, rising above the din comes a loud, protesting shriek as the Radiant Gate is torn from its hinges, the vast metal slabs that make up each door slamming into the ground with enough force to shatter the road and hurl clouds of dirt into the air.

When the cacophony's last echoes are only memories honoured in the ringing of Nico's ears, when the billowing mist of rock dust and displaced earth has settled into a haze, when the last roots have sealed themselves away in the earth again, the dull metal slabs that once made up the Radiant Gate form a ramp into the city.

Nico crouches, pressing her hand to the split surface of the road, reaching for the fading presence of the Old Forest. "All of our debts are settled," she whispers, her voice hoarse. "Thank you. Goodbye, trees."

She lingers for a moment, remembering ten years ago. Then Nico adjusts her sling so that a gourd of venom is at hand, loosens the knife Chase made for her in its sheath, grips her staff tightly, and steps onto the surface of the broken gate.

She climbs quickly, though she hesitates at the top of the ramp. Six feet below her, glowing cobblestones mark the interior of the Shining City. Nico Minoru takes a deep breath, then she leaps from the ramp, and sets foot in the Shining City.

* * *

The Great Prism comes for her before she's made it ten paces into the city.

If Alex's father is feeling the effects of the manticore venom, it manifests in him as sheer fury rather than the inward, spiralling madness drilling into the core of most of the others exposed to Nico's poison. He hurls himself at Nico, roaring a wordless challenge, a greatsword inlaid with extensive runework shrieking in counterpoint as he slashes at Nico, trying to cleave her in half.

Nico leaps to the side, and his blade bites deep into the cobbles, splitting them and bleeding motes of red light into the air. He wrenches his sword free with a twitch of his wrists and attacks again, his sword a silver blur, trailing the radiance of its enchantment, producing a keening wail as it cuts through the air.

"Shield!" Her staff summons a cage of energy around her, but his sword cuts through it as if it were gossamer. Nico is forced to leap back, barely avoiding the tip of his blade.

He laughs, pressing forward, his sword speeding up, his eyes burning with fury like a fever.

Nico retreats, unable to do anything but duck, dodge and look for a way to fight him. To try to block his with her staff would be to invite death: even if Nico's staff could withstand the blow and ward off the magics layered into every fold of the silver-steel, her arms could never hope to match Alex's father's strength. And she doubts she can summon a shield strong enough to protect her. The power of the Shining City's forges has already been demonstrated: the Great Prism can slice through her magic and through her body in a single cut. The length of his blade and the reach of his arms make a fighting back near impossible, too.

She dodges again, losing a strand of hair to his blade, feeling a sudden sting when a shallow cut opens in her scalp. Nico ducks another attack, risking a quick look back that shows her that she has lost eight of the nine paces she had gained. Her heel is close to the shadow cast by the fallen gates.

Nico sets her jaw and clutches her staff with both hands. The Great Prism is a large man, very strong, and far faster than a man his size has any right to be. His sword is as deadly as the art of spell-forging can make it, and his armour is warded against all commonly known magics and lesser blades. Even in the rage that grips him, that steers him into risks he might not chance if he were calm, Alex's father has little to fear from most opponents.

But formidable as the Great Prism of the Radiant Legion is, to Nico he is smaller than a wyvern. He is slower than a forest wraith. His sword is no more deadly than a hundred dangers she has bested in the Old Forest. And his armour is how she will beat him.

Nico has learned spells from the trees that no human throat has uttered, that no human hand has rendered in millenia. The wards in the Great Prism's armour are potent, but Nico knows magic the Shining City's people imagine lost to the ages

All she needs is an opportunity to attack.

Nico twists to one side, narrowly avoiding a slash, uses her staff and all her strength to push wide a thrust. Alex's father recovers from his lunge, raising his sword high for an overhead strike. Nico jumps back, ducking her head, and takes shelter under the fallen gate. The force of his swing drives the Great Prism's sword into the metallic surface an inch from Nico's head, but this time, the sword doesn't bite. Even with its magic disrupted, the metal of the Radiant Gate is stronger than any blade. The greatsword makes a ringing sound as it is repelled from the surface, shrieking as if in pain. Alex's father stumbles back, trying to recover his balance and control of his weapon.

And in that moment where the Great Prism falters, Nico thrusts the tip of her staff against his breastplate. Calling on magics gleaned from scars she found halfway up the trunk of an oak in a murmuring grove, Nico forms her spell around a single word. " _Resonate!_ "

Her magic slips between the wards on his armour, seeking not to break through but to reach the metal itself. Alex's father gasps when the breastplate shivers, then begins to tremble violently. Within seconds, the shaking metal begins to split, breaking apart where the runes were most deeply engraved. Disrupted magic flares and his breastplate shatters, forcing Nico to duck and throw up a hasty shield to protect herself from the shrapnel.

A quilted arming doublet is all the protection Alex's father has. It's enchantments protect him from being cooked and shredded by the explosion, but he is thrown from his feet by the blast. As Nico lowers her shield and drops down onto the cobbles once more, blood wells up from half a dozen small wounds in the Great Prism's chest.

Nico advances, standing over her fallen foe. She takes a moment to catch her breath, watching Alex's father struggle to maintain his own. She has no pity for him, or for the dozens of others who lie wounded in the rubble around her, but she feels no satisfaction either.

Suddenly, Nico becomes aware of the sound of many booted feet approaching. She reaches for her sling, and her remaining powdered venom. Soldiers pour out of side streets and alleys, responding to the chaos at the fallen gate. But between Nico and the new arrivals are the panicking guards fleeing her, or fallen around the rubble of the broken gate, or stumbling around, raving in the street, lost in the madness induced by her manticore venom. Those fresh to the scene slow as they arrive, their haste and purpose melting away at the sight of the devastation before them.

And then they see the Great Prism, his armour shattered, his body bleeding. They see Nico standing over him, in the ruins of the Radiant Gate. They see the Witch of the Woods, wreathed in darkness and vengeance, an outside force long feared, now inside, walking the streets they thought were safe.

Confusion slows them, then fear turns them into jostling masses as some soldiers try to push forward and others try to retreat. Nico hears the many names they've given her over the years, passed from lip to ear to the place in their hearts where they made space for the monster they imagined.

Nico watches as they weave a spell of their own, a spell born in horror stories that have grown in the telling for almost a decade, a spell that is completed in the moment that the defenders of the Shining City see Nico. In that moment, despair breaks the Radiant Legion before Nico can lift a finger against them.

Not all of them give in to fear, of course. Not right away. But panic is like a flame in a drought-stricken wheat field, spreading quickly and consuming everything it touches. Fights break out in the streets around Nico as soldiers try to escape through the dense press of other men still trying to reach the gate. It takes mere moments for discipline to break down and for fear to take control.

Nico walks deeper into the city, watchful for anyone who might try to stop her. But it seems that breaking the Radiant Gate has broken the resolve of the populace.

It occurs to Nico, as she enters an already empty market square, haunted by the echoes of screams and running feet, that the people of the Shining City have been dreading that another disaster will strike them since Jonah brought death and terror into their lives a year ago. And now, on the day that Karolina, their new Guardian, is being tried for consorting with dark powers, the One Who Walks In Darkness has brought a waking nightmare to their streets again.

Fear has been festering in the Shining City ever since. And the Ruling Council have done nothing to assuage it, hoping instead to use it as a weapon of control to make Karolina their tool and the citizens pliable. That thought is enough to make Nico feel some sympathy for the people of the Shining City. That sympathy isn't enough to make her hesitate when a company of soldiers march into the square, their expressions determined, their spearpoints aimed at her.

Nico doesn't hesitate. Sympathy is little to the anger still simmering inside her, and it's nothing to what she feels for Karolina. So when their captain gives the order for his company to advance, Nico shows them her teeth and pulls a gourd of venom from her sling.

* * *

Silence fills the square when Nico's done, a silence deeper than any she knew in the forest. Cities are quiet creatures, it seems, without people rushing through their veins. There is a fountain in the square, where Nico first washes the wound in her scalp and the sweat from her brow, then uses the water in the basin to scry for Karolina.

As she'd hoped, the protections in the walls that had blocked her efforts to scry the city over the years do not prevent scrying _within_ the city. Nico's spell falls from her lips and an instant later the water shimmers, breaking up the reflection of her face and showing her Karolina's instead. Nico lets out a shaky breath when she sees that Karolina is still alive, and apparently unhurt. She looks miserable, though, her eyes dull and her skin pale. Her hands are wrapped in chains that pulse with magic, connected to a silver-steel collar that binds her neck. The collar in turn is chained to a ring in the wall, low enough to the ground to force Karolina to kneel awkwardly on a stone floor.

"Show me where she is!" Nico feels a fresh wave of fury rise within her, lifting her up past petty concerns like her injuries and fatigue. She watches the images in the water shift, snaking through a dark corridor, up a flight of stairs, then out under the sky, revealing a pure white building in a huge, beautiful plaza. From there her magic shows her a path through tangles of streets from the heart of the city to the fountain where Nico stands. She lets the spell fade, then turns and strides away, pausing only to take something from a merchant's stall.

"Hold on, Karolina," Nico whispers, tucking the thing she stole into her belt pouch.

* * *

It is a strange thing to walk through the Shining City, a place that was hidden from her scrying and had taken a thousand guises in her imagination. Nico had thought it would be beautiful, but austere and remote as a snowy mountaintop. She finds instead that the city's stones glow softly in myriad gentle hues, that the hard lines of stone are softened by tapestries and silken hangings, by flowers, trees, gardens, parks.

There are great towers, temples that boast beautiful carvings above their open doors, homes--simple, elegant, or vast--and more buildings whose nature are mysterious to Nico. She passes a building made of dark, lacquered wood, that emits a fragrance that tells Nico it’s a tea house. It is empty when Nico passes it, abandoned in evident haste when news reached its occupants of Nico's progress through the city.

It makes Nico wonder what it might have been like, to share a table in such a place with Karolina. It makes Nico wonder what _she_ might have been like, if ten years ago the Guardian had stood aside and the Minorus had been allowed to make their home here. The streets would be full of life, and likely Nico would have been merely one face among many, unremarkable and unremarked.

Perhaps it would have been a good life. There is no way to know, and even if there were, Nico has no hunger for it. What might have been is a ghost she will not let haunt her. What happens now, what happens next, is where Nico knows she has to live. Tomorrow is an impossible distance away. She'll worry about what she'll do and where she'll go when that distance has been travelled. For now, Nico is the Witch of the Woods. What happens next is that she will save Karolina.

Nico tells herself that there is nothing else. She thinks of Karolina in chains, and lets her rage sweep everything else away.

* * *

Her venom is spent, her knife is bloody, and her feet are dragging by the time Nico reaches the courthouse.

For a while, it had seemed as though the Radiant Legion was becoming more organised, more willing to take a series of doomed stands against Nico. But something has changed in the Shining City since Nico's arrival sent panic racing through the streets. Sounds of people arguing, of weapons clashing, and of voices raised in song or cheering have reached Nico, filtered through alleys and side streets she otherwise ignores.

Something is happening in the Shining City, and Nico supposes it has something to do with Gert and Alex and the others putting their own plans into motion. Perhaps she should hope so, but in truth, beyond the fact that the city's other concerns are keeping what's left of the Radiant Legion from descending on her all at once, Nico hasn't the energy to care.

Even if she was at her best, the magic she's used and the fighting she's done would have taxed Nico. But she hasn't fully recovered from her injury and illness. Exhaustion lies heavy on her shoulders, like a lead-lined cloak, as Nico walks into the great square at the heart of the city. Awaiting her on the steps of the courthouse are two men and three women. The courthouse is a majestic building, sweeping high up into the air and adorned with statues of the gods and other figures Nico supposes are past rulers or famous judges. It is not the most imposing building in the square, which is brighter and more richly appointed than any other part of the city that Nico has seen.

The five people gathered in front of the courthouse are more ornate still: bedecked in silks and jewels, their hair elaborately styled and their faces painted in extravagant style. Each of them holds some kind of wand or staff or weapon, and each of them stares at Nico like she is filth clinging to their shoes.

"You must be the Ruling Council," Nico says, advancing to the foot of the stairs. She pauses there, appraising them all and gathering what's left of her strength. Her staff strains against her grip, eager to be unleashed. "You look ridiculous."

"Well, Witch of the Woods. You look dead to me." A black woman, Alex's mother, points a crystal wand at Nico and hisses a spell. Lightning arcs out, spearing at Nico's chest.

Nico's staff lunges forward, catching the lightning and grounding it. Nico stares up at the Ruling Council, seeing the confusion and dismay written on most of their faces.

"That's...it? Your husband made a better attempt.”

Alex’s mother snarls, and frost pours in a blizzard from her wand.

“Pfft." Nico uses her staff to redirect the magic away from her. "Chimera breath is colder, and I learned how to ward it away when I was seven." She climbs another step. "You're not used to fighting for yourselves, are you? That makes sense. Gert told me you were cowards."

“You know Gert?” the diminutive man above her gasps.

He exchanges startled looks with a red-haired woman. Gert and Molly's parents. The blonde woman and the tall, sinister man must be Chase's, then. Chase's father is the only one who doesn't look concerned. That in itself concerns Nico. Perhaps, if she was fresh, Nico could challenge these five and hope to win. But she's used so much magic already, and there's a chill in her limbs, a shakiness in her hands, a ragged quality to her breath that tells her she's near her limit.

"She's a liar!" Alex's mother directs a cone of blue fire at Nico. "She's never spoken to Gert! And we can make sure she'll never get near any of our children."

The Old Forest doesn't allow fire to burn freely, and Nico's staff is made of wood from the Old Forest, formed around the surviving splinter of her mother's staff. Nico summons a transparent shield, then ascends the steps, holding her staff high. The effort of climbing proves more taxing than warding off the flames.

"I know them all! Does that make them traitors, like Karolina?" Nico laughs. "Chase even made me this knife. See?"

As soon as stream of magical fire stops, Nico hurls Chase's knife. Chase's runework cuts through the defensive shield Alex's mother's bracelet throws up, and the point buries itself in her wrist. She cries out as her hand spasms open, and the crystal wand falls, rolling down the steps towards Nico. Nico lunges with her staff when it nears her, trapping the crystal against a step.

"Crack!" Nico says, cheerfully, and the wand shatters. Magical energy flares up in a burst of many colours, but Nico snaps, "Consume," and a sphere of darkness engulfs both the fragments and the energy spilling from them. Nico flicks the tip of her staff up at the other Ruling Council members, even as they point various devices at her, and snarls, "Release!"

Razor sharp slivers of crystal are propelled from the tip of her staff with all the force of the magical explosion behind them. The Ruling Council members are thrown into disarray, ducking and activating defensive charms. The lacerating shards cause no real damage, but Nico hadn't thought they would. All she'd hoped for was an opening in their ranks, and she runs through the one they make for her, casting a withering hex at Chase's mother when she tries to block Nico's path, and ducking under a net thrown at her by Gert's father. She lashes out with her staff, managing to clip his chin, sending him reeling away, and then she's past them all.

Nico charges up the last few stairs as quickly as she can, and when the doors of the courthouse stand in front of her, she digs deep into her reserves of endurance and summons a wind like a battering ram to burst them open. With the last of her strength, Nico creates a shield in the doorway, knowing it won't keep the Ruling Council out for long, but hoping it will be for long enough.

Leaning heavily on her staff, panting and sweating, Nico walks as quickly as she can into the marble and quartz depths of the courthouse, seeking the stairs down to the cells.

* * *

The cells under the courthouse are darker, colder and more foul than anywhere Nico knew in the Old Forest. The stink roils her empty stomach, but it's the contrast with the beauty above that troubles Nico the most. It's like finding rot in the trunk of an otherwise healthy tree.

Nico finds Karolina in the cell farthest from the stairs, farthest from the light that filters down the stairwell. She withers the door, reducing it to ash and sludge, in a fit of anger that leaves her with sparks swimming in her vision.

Karolina is huddled on the floor, her long hair down over her face, her movement so constrained by chains that she can't turn her head far enough to see. Her voice is small and weary, her mouth so dry it takes her two attempts to speak. "Is it time for my trial already?"

Nico pauses, because her throat is hot and swollen and her eyes are brimming and the fire of her rage is guttering out. But in its place a warmer, more powerful feeling sweeps through Nico. Her staff is heavy and listless in her grip. Nico swallows, and touches her hand to Karolina's chains. She reaches deep inside herself, into the dwindling reserves of her power and beyond, tapping into the warmth Karolina has birthed in her. "Unlock."

With a series of clicks, every lock that held the chains in place opens up, and such is the power of Nico's spell in that moment that every lock in the dungeon that hears her opens, and refuses to be sealed ever again.

Karolina gasps when her chains fall away, and again when she looks up and sees who has come for her. " _Nico_?"

“Hi.” Nico finds a smile for her. She fumbles in her belt pouch and presents Karolina with the thing she stole an hour and a lifetime ago. "I brought you an orange."

"You brought me...?" Karolina gapes at her, then bursts out laughing. She holds a hand over her mouth, but she doesn't take her eyes off of Nico for a moment. Even in the near-dark of her cell, Karolina's eyes are as blue as the summer sky. "Gods' light, I've missed you, Nico!"

“I…” Nico swallows again. "Karolina, I...I don't hate you. I don't, I didn't...I could never hate you. I'm sorry I said I did. I...needed to tell you that."

"Oh." Karolina unfolds from the floor, growing to her full height. Her skin begins to glow, her radiance swelling when she gently takes the orange from Nico's hand. "Thank you," she whispers. She smiles, her teeth and her eyes mellowing the darkness. "I, ah, don't have anything for you right now, though."

"Yes, you do," Nico whispers. Her voice becomes even more quiet, but she forces herself to say, "You know you don’t need anything to be everything I need."

A moment later, Nico is engulfed in a hug. She drops her staff and embraces Karolina as fiercely as she can.

“I’m sorry too,” Karolina says, her voice thick. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth. I’m so sorry I hurt you.”

“It’s...okay. We’re okay." And even in the filth of the cells, Nico knows it’s true. Simply being close to Karolina, holding her, hearing her voice...it soothes all the hurts that Nico carries, eases the pain of the wounds that fear and rage and loneliness have made in her. "I missed you too, you know."

Karolina draws back, but only so she can lean down and meet Nico’s eyes and smile. “How did you _get_ here…?”

"I...went through the Radiant Gate. I had to. You saved me in the forest,” Nico says, looking down, her face hot. “I owed you.”

“Is that…” Her voice wavers. “Is that the only reason you’re here?”

“...no,” Nico admits, summoning more courage than it took to face the archers at the Radiant Gate. She looks up, into Karolina’s face, which glows with soft, warm light. “It isn’t. That isn’t the reason at all. I...I _had_ to find you. I needed you to be okay. I'll always need you to be okay, because you’re...because I--”

Nico isn’t sure what sort of magic Chase’s father uses on her. All she knows is that one moment her world is as large as the space that she and Karolina occupy, and then it shrinks down to the place behind her eyes as every muscle spasms and every nerve in her body lights up with pain. She slips out of Karolina’s arms, falling to the floor where she thrashes helplessly. Her staff lies inches away and far beyond her reach. She can’t draw breath enough to call for it.

She can’t draw breath enough to stay alive.

Nico is dimly aware of Karolina screaming, and of footsteps drawing closer. Torchlight chases the shadows to the corners of Karolina’s cell and pollutes the radiance of Karolina’s skin. She becomes aware of a commotion, and it forces her to try to escape the confines of her failing body, to focus on what is happening around her.

“...careful, Victor!” Alex’s mother’s voice. “We need the witch alive. We’re going to need someone to put on trial for this mess!”

“I’m aware, Catherine,” a man’s sardonic voice answers. Chase’s father. Victor. “But maintaining the torpor field on both of them isn’t easy. If I’d had more time to calibrate the device on the witch, then I wouldn’t have to--”

“That _witch_ destroyed a wand that has been in my family for centuries, and nearly took my fucking hand! While you stood by and _calibrated_!”

“And if I hadn’t, we wouldn’t have snared the witch at all, now would we? We’ve only got one chance to stop this mess from spinning out of control, and that means working with what we have. So let’s do what we came here to do, shall we? And then you can join your husband in the healing pools.” Victor clears his throat. “Karolina. Karolina! Stop fighting. Stop it, and listen.”

Nico can’t turn her head, but she forces her eyes to move, and from the corner of her eye she sees Karolina. Karolina is hunched down, the glow of her body muted, her arms raised defensively. She’s surrounded by a sickly yellow light.

“Karolina,” Alex’s mother says, her anger suddenly buried under layers of silk and velvet. “Karolina, we know you’re...distressed. And rightly so. We’ve made mistakes in the way we’ve treated you. I acknowledge that. And we will discuss how to...redress the situation. But right now...right now, we need to put all of that aside. We have a...problem. And you, Karolina, are the solution.”

Nico feels something shift, feels a lessening in the force that’s crushing her lungs. She draws in a sip of air, tears leaking from her eyes. She tries to blink them away, but her vision remains blurred.

“You see, Karolina, we have an opportunity to rewrite all of our stories. We have a chance to work for the common good--”

“We’re all fucked, is what Catherine’s trying to say,” Chase’s father interjects. “The Witch of the Fucking Woods destroyed the Radiant Gate. Which...I would love to know how she managed _that_ \--”

“Victor. Focus.”

“Right. Yes. So...there are riots in the streets and the Radiant Legion are fighting amongst themselves. The citizens have become a mob...it’s a mess. It’s a fucking mess, and it will turn into a bloodbath before the day is out. And that’s just the start of it, because as soon as our neighbours hear that there’s a big hole in our defences, there’ll be a race to see who can get an army--”

“That can wait,” Alex’s mother snaps. “Today, people are bleeding. _Our_ people, Karolina! My husband...my husband is fighting for his life, because of what this _creature_ did. Our children, your _friends_ are out there in the city right now, and who is going to help them? Who is going to hold this city together through this crisis? We need the Guardian. We need you.”

“Just think about it,” Chase’s father adds, “If we clean this mess up, we can restore your image in the eyes of the city.”

“And we can forge an alliance. We could give you a seat at the council table. The way it always should have been.”

“We’ll work together, to teach you how to use your powers. So that we can all reshape this city into something even greater!”

“And of course, Karolina,” Catherine says softly, “we’ll release your mother.”

Silence follows that.

Nico wishes she could see Karolina’s face. She wishes she could reach out and find her staff, find a way to sever the magic that binds her and Karolina both. She can’t, though. The pain that grips her crushes her down into something small and primitive, something that is barely remembers being a someone anymore.

It takes everything that Nico has left to push out a breath that forms a single syllable: “Kar…”

In answer, Nico hears Karolina suck in a breath.

“I...am the Guardian of the Shining City.” Karolina’s voice sounds impossibly distant, impossibly weak. “It is...the Guardian’s duty...to protect the innocent from the...monsters who lurk in the darkness.”

“Of course it is!” Alex’s mother croons. “And that’s all we’re asking you to do! Help us protect our people. Protect them from themselves today, and from our enemies tomorrow.”

Nico can only see darkness. Perhaps her eyelids have closed over, or perhaps she can no longer see. It doesn’t seem to matter, either way.

“I...know my duty,” Karolina says, and her voice seems to grow in strength. The darkness is stripped from Nico’s eyes as light bursts from Karolina’s skin, light of every shade, light that dissipates Victor’s magic and laves Nico’s body with healing warmth. “It’s to protect people like Nico…” A warm hand touches Nico’s back, and her lungs fill with air. “From monsters like you.”

Light scours the cells, burns away Victor and Catherine’s cries, obliterates the darkness and Nico’s awareness both.

* * *

Nico wakes, feeling like she’s floating in warm water.

She wakes slowly, strangely unafraid. She becomes aware of someone else’s hand holding hers. Nico manages to open an eye and look.

A very tired-looking Karolina smiles at her. “Rest, Nico. You’re safe here.”

"Are...you?"

Karolina squeezes her hand. "I am. I'll have to go soon, but I'll be back. Everything is...it's not okay, but it's going to be."

"Good." Nico frowns, trying to find something solid in the swamp of her thoughts. "I broke your gate. Are you mad?"

"I saw that! I saw what you did. But it wasn't my gate, and I'm not mad." Karolina leans over her, and presses her lips to Nico's brow. "You make the impossible possible, Nico Minoru. I will always be grateful."

"I...I hurt people, too."

"Shh. Rest, Nico. I promise that things will be better when you wake up."

Nico finds no reason to doubt her, so she smiles and sinks back into sleep.

* * *

The next time she wakes up, Nico discovers that she really is floating in warm water.

She's lying on her back in a shallow pool in a large stone basin, set in the floor of an old stone chamber. The ceiling above her is vaulted, faintly glowing, and decorated with paintings of people working together to build the Shining City. Nico has seen the remains of similar painting in ruins in the Old Forest, art created in a time when lifelike human figures were beyond the scope of the artists and their tools.

She studies the paintings for a while, her mind and body at peace, until she realises that the Shining City was at war with itself according to the Ruling Council, and that her tranquillity is too deep to be natural.

"This is a trick," Nico sighs. She forces her relaxed muscles to work, finding her footing in the pool and making clumsily for the nearest edge.

"That's a very Witch of the Woods attitude to take," a woman's voice says.

Nico turns her head to find Gert floating in another basin beside hers. "Gert?"

Gert pries open her eyes and smiles languidly at Nico. "We're in the healing pools. It's not a trick, it's just...nice."

Nico snorts. She levers herself out of the basin, shivering when the air touches her skin. She's been stripped to her underclothes, and is without knife or staff. Nico looks around the room, seeing around a dozen other pools, each occupied by a sleeping person. "What happened?"

"I stopped a riot, but then, when I was denouncing my parents to the crowd, a wizard blasted me into a wall and I broke my leg," Gert murmurs. Her eyes close over and she sinks back into the water's embrace. "I feel _much_ better now, though..."

"So...it worked out? You stopped your parents?"

"Mm, Karolina did. Alex, too." Gert's face falls. "Our parents are going to face trial. It's...the right thing. But it...it doesn't feel good. You know?"

"I think so," Nico says softly, after giving it due thought.

By the time she's finished speaking, she realises that Gert's breathing has deepened, and that sleep has claimed her.

After making sure that Gert is not in danger of drowning, Nico scowls around her, but there are no guards in sight. She spots a door in a deep recess in one wall, and makes her way to it, walking carefully through the narrow pathways between the healing pools. As she walks, her body wakes up. Physically, she feels...good. Rested and without pain. She runs her hand over the wound the thing in the library left in her side, finding it healed and the scars faded to thin white lines.

Nico pushes through the door, into a stone chamber with an uneven floor. It's lined with shelves full of towels and others full of clothes. Nico takes one of the former and dries herself off while she hunts through the latter until she finds her dress. She's surprised to discover that it's been cleaned, and moreso that it's been mended. Nico isn't even sure how her dress got torn, and when she checks her body for corresponding marks, she finds only smooth, healthy flesh.

There's no sign of her staff, or Chase's knife, but Nico does find her belt, sheathe and pouch. She finds a fresh apple in her pouch, too. That makes her smile, and the tension that had crept into her shoulders since she emerged from the healing pool melts away again.

"Karolina," Nico whispers, smiling.

She discovers she has an appetite, so Nico takes a large bite out of the apple, then goes looking for an exit and for answers.

* * *

Nico finds Alex instead, sitting on a wicker chair in a circular hall. A bag sits by his feet, and Nico recognises the corner of a glowing clay tablet poking out of it. Alex, though, seems absorbed with something else: Nico's staff, which he holds in his lap and studies intently. When Nico stops in front of him, he looks up. His eyes are bloodshot and dull. "You're awake."

"You have my staff."

"Hm?" He blinks, then looks down at his lap. "Oh. Yes. You know, I've been thinking...if I'd known what you could do with this, would I still have asked for your help?"

Nico has no answer to that, so she gives him none.

"I guess it doesn't matter. I guess..." He raises his head, smiling wearily. "I got what I wanted, Nico. My parents...the whole Ruling Council, they've been exposed. There's a committee, which is creating more committees to...investigate corruption, figure out how to govern now and in the future, work on a new foreign policy. We won't be starting any wars. We won. I won."

Nico studies him. "You should get some sleep, Alex."

"No. No." His smile fades. "My father is going to be in the healing pools for days. He...he hasn't woken up yet. But he might, any moment."

Once again, Nico finds herself with nothing to say.

"My mother..." Alex turns her staff over and over in his hands. "Is under arrest. There were a lot of people who needed the pools more than she did, even after Karolina...subdued her."

"I'm surprised they let me use one," Nico says, when the silence stretches out past what even she can tolerate.

"Well, Karolina insisted." Alex stands up. He considers Nico's staff again. "I did, too. And after Gert, Chase, Molly and I exposed our parents' corruption, and Karolina helped us stop the city tearing itself apart...people listen to us now. Everyone's still terrified of the Witch of the Woods, but they..."

Nico swallows down a surge of anger. "Fear Karolina more?"

"No," Alex says, drawing the word out. "They respect her. They respect me."

"Oh." Nico bites her lip. She looks past Alex, staring into nothing and thinking about what her future will bring. She snaps out of it only when Alex tosses her the staff. She almost fumbles the catch. The staff sits awkwardly in her hands. "Alex--"

"You deserved better than I treated you, Nico Minoru." Alex sighs. "I know you don't want it, but I am in your debt. If I can ever do something for you..."

Nico hesitates, then nods. "You could tell me how to get out of here?"

"That way." He points to a door to Nico's right. "Good luck, Nico."

"You too, Alex."

She's through the door and at the foot of a set of stairs when he calls out one last time. "Last I heard, she was at the breach!"

Nico doesn't look back, but she does raise her hand in a wave before the door closes behind her.

* * *

It's night in the Shining City, and the streets and the walls emit a soft yellow light, making it easy to see and much too easy to be seen. The streets are busy. Or rather, they are _full_. People are gathered in groups, talking softly, being near each other, being visible, simply _being_.

They all look at Nico as she passes. No one stares for long. No one accosts her. Silence ripples out in front of her, and leaves a wake behind her before the sounds of conversation rise again, louder than before. She passes through the muted colours of the Shining City, through the crowds of people who fled from her in daylight and make her feel like a ghost in the night.

It takes a body colliding with hers for Nico to shake the feeling that she might not have survived her encounter with Victor and Catherine in Karolina's cell. Nico reaches first for a knife she no longer has, then tries to think of a spell as arms wrap around her, and then she relaxes when Molly speaks.

"Nico! You're okay!" Molly squeezes Nico tight. Her grip is surprisingly strong, and Nico has no easy way to escape. "We're all okay! Except...except not Gert. And not our parents. They're in, they're in prison...and there was fighting and people got hurt, and I think Eiffel's never going to speak to me again because I yelled at her, but...but Alex says things are going to get better now. And that's good, because they were bad. And now...now you're here! Which is even better!"

Chase emerges from the crowd, wincing at Nico. "Sorry. Some people are calling us heroes. There are people in mourning in some parts of the city, and others are celebrating. It's all...strange, but, uh, anyway, someone gave Molly her first cup of wine."

He manages to pry Molly off of Nico, only for the younger girl to wrap her arms around him instead. Chase sighs, but he pats Molly's shoulder affectionately.

Nico looks around, keenly aware of how many people are watching. "Heroes probably shouldn't be seen with the Witch of the Woods, Chase."

"Well, good thing I'm not a hero then." He shakes his head, frowning. "I didn't do much today. I didn't do anything _heroic_. Not like Gert. Or Karolina! Or even Alex. But the whole city has been shaken up, and people need someone to believe in at a time like this. I guess...that's us."

"You stood up to that mob," Molly mumbles into his chest. "And if you hadn't, Gert wouldn't have been able to talk them down. And then you saved Gert when the bad wizards attacked us..."

"You helped during all of those things," Chase says, his smile returning as he looks at her.

Molly raises her head. "Yeah. And I'm _definitely_ a hero! So you must be as well."

Nico laughs softly. "I don't know what happened exactly, but I believe you, Molly."

"Oh! Then let me..." Molly yawns cavernously. "Lemme...tell you everything..." Her head slumps, falling against Chase.

He smiles at Nico over Molly's head. "Maybe tomorrow, Molly. I think we should get you to bed for now."

"'kay, 'morrow." Molly raises her head with an effort. "We can get breakfast, Nico, and tell each other our stories. I want to know how you...saved Karolina. And wrecked the gate! Because... _how_? Can we? Please?"

"I'd like that, Molly," Nico says, avoiding Molly's gaze. Nico's eyes land on a knot of men and women who quickly look away from her. "I'd...like to be able to do that."

When she looks back, Molly is half asleep but Chase is watching her keenly.

"I know it may not seem like it now," Chase says quietly, "but they'll come around. Give it some time and--"

"I will never be their hero, Chase. I will always be the dark witch who destroyed their walls, and their sense of safety."

"There was nothing safe about living here, not while Jonah and our..." He swallows. "Without you, things could've been--"

"I spoke to Gert." She almost feels guilty at how his face lights up, at how easy it is to distract him. "She fell asleep again, but she might wake up soon."

Chase opens his mouth, then closes it again. He sighs. "Nico. Just...don't leave without saying goodbye. Please?"

"Go on, Chase. Molly needs her bed. And Gert needs you."

He gives her one last pleading look before Molly stumbles where she stands, and he has to wrangle her into waking and walking again.

Nico watches them until they're out of sight. When they are, Nico says, "Goodbye."

* * *

Closer to the broken gate, Nico finds a current that pulls her and many others through lanes and alleys and roads, that pulls them all to where a huge crowd is gathered, is gathering, is ever growing.

Even where the bodies are tightly pressed, space opens up around Nico. It's easy to glide to the edges of the crowd, easy to find a wall to boost herself onto, and easy from there to climb onto the rooftops and use them to bypass the crowd altogether. Nico isn't alone on the rooftops, but her dress of midnight hue cuts through the light spilling out and up from the roofs, marking her where in the Old Forest it had hidden her. Nico isn't alone on the rooftops, but where she passes silence reigns and gazes are averted.

Nico keeps her own eyes focused on what's ahead of her and ignores everything else.

The crowd has gathered around the wound in the city's walls, at the place where Nico cast down the Radiant Gate. But it isn't the breach that pulls them or Nico in, it's the woman who stands on the fallen gate and glows more brightly than it ever did. Nico stops at the edge of a roof twenty feet from the breach and leans on her staff.

The rubble Nico created on her way into the city is the only place where light doesn't spill from metal and stone. But the dark wound Nico made is the most brightly lit place in the city.

Karolina is there.

Karolina is pastel-hued and tall and wild-haired and achingly lovely. She's surrounded by a dozen men and women who wear robes in many different shades. They examine the gate and the walls, and they confer with each other, and they speak to Karolina, but most of all they listen when Karolina chooses to speak.

At first, Nico thinks that the gathering is there to learn if the Radiant Gate can be repaired, but gradually she realises that none of them, not a single person in the swelling multitudes or among the robed figures who nod so wisely at each other, are there for any reason but this: to see and be close to Karolina.

Nico understands that desire. It burns as a clear, pure flame within her, warming her through.

"They love her now," Nico says softly, a joyless smile twisting her mouth. "I brought their fear out, and she took it away. And now they love her. And..."

And Chase is wrong: the people of the Shining City will always hate Nico. But they have begun to love Karolina, and that is as it should be.

Nico watches Karolina for minutes and more, until Karolina turns to the crowd and raises her arms. Nico had thought the people below her were silent, but it was only that she had not heard their talk. True hush descends at Karolina's gesture, and Nico finds herself leaning forward like all everyone else in expectation of Karolina's words.

"Good people!" Karolina lets her gaze travel across the throng. "I...I was an actress once, but I always had someone else to write my lines. Forgive me if my words should falter now. I'm without a script, and I've never stood before so large a crowd."

Laughter greets her, and cries of encouragement. Karolina smiles, but it's a nervous smile, and one hand rises to fiddle with a strand of her luminous hair. Then her head turns, and all at once she's looking right at Nico. Karolina seems to swell, standing taller, shining brighter than before. Her smile becomes real, becomes radiant.

"Good people," she says firmly, her eyes rooted on Nico. "This is a day of grief and mourning. The Radiant Gate has fallen, and it is uncertain if it can be repaired. The Ruling Council await trial, and it is uncertain if the council should be restored. But this is a day of healing, too. We have suffered, some...some far more than others. And yet, we've begun to draw the poison from a wound we have left untreated for too long. The Radiant Gate didn't protect us from the fear that grew within our city and within our hearts. Perhaps without it, without the lock that sealed us in every night, we can learn to let our fears go. We...we have a chance to heal. We have a chance to grow in ways that our old government would not allow, and we owe that to the bravery of...good people." Karolina dips her head to Nico. "People like you."

She turns her attention to the crowd again. "It won't be easy. There are going to be so many problems to solve. But I believe that they _can_ be solved, because I believe in you. Today was a day for mourning. Tomorrow, tomorrow is the day the Shining City starts to repair our bonds with our neighbours, and with each other."

There are cheers, and applause, and then a voice cries out, "What about tonight?"

Karolina laughs, and the people laugh with her. "I'd say we should all rest. But I doubt I'll sleep, and if you're like me...then be with the ones you love. Or take the time to make new friends! I think I heard fiddles playing in the Artisans' Square. Dance, if you care to! I know that I'll..."

She trails off, her eyes widening as a disturbance ripples through the crowd. Suddenly she gasps, and leaps from the gate to the cobbles below. A woman emerges from the crush of bodies, an older woman in a white dress with long red hair, and Karolina's skin blazes brighter than ever.

"Mom!" Karolina cries out, and rushes to her mother's embrace.

Nico watches them hug, watches them trip over their words of greeting, watches the people roar their approval and burst into song in the joy of the moment.

"This is where you're meant to be," Nico says, brushing tears from the corners of her eyes. "This is how it should be. G-goodbye, Karolina. Goddess grant you nothing but joy."

Nico turns away and walks until she finds a quiet street to climb down into. From there, she disappears into the city to gather what she needs before she leaves forever. No tears fall from her eyes, but only because she brushes them away as quickly as they form.

* * *

For the first time, Nico feels a measure of guilt at stealing from the merchants of the Shining City. But she has no coin, or goods to trade with, and she has need of a pack, a waterskin, food and new clothes. She takes only as much as she imagines she'll need to get her to the next town, and she hopes that the guilt will fade quickly.

It's near dawn before the streets empty enough for Nico to slip quietly through the breach. There are work crews in place, clearing away the rubble of broken walls and manoeuvring a crane into place so that they can deal with the massive slabs of dull metal that once made up the Radiant Gate.

It isn't easy to leave unnoticed, but Nico is still the One Who Walks in Darkness, and she knows how to hide herself from watchful eyes and make her movements as silent as a wraith's. The sun is threatening the horizon when she comes to the boundary stone. Nico pauses for a moment there, brushing her fingers against the place where she fell asleep beside Karolina. It starts an ache in her that makes her want to turn around, makes her want to march back into the Shining City and find Karolina and...

It's impossible. There is no future for the Witch of the Woods in the Shining City, nor even for Nico Minoru. But beyond that is the simple truth that Nico learned on the rooftops last night: as much as she wants Karolina, as much as she might _need_ Karolina, Nico can only hurt her by staying. Karolina doesn't need Nico holding her back when she finally has a family and a future again.

The best thing for Karolina is for Nico to leave. The _only_ thing for Nico to do is leave.

Though she has one last thing to do before she lets the road carry her away, so Nico sets out with her staff in her hand, walking from the boundary stone to the edge of the Old Forest for the final time.

She stops a respectful distance from the trees. Technically, she has a day or two yet before her deal with the Youngest Oldest Tree comes into effect, but Nico knows from the moment that she draws near that the trees will not welcome her if she tries to enter. The Old Forest was her home for a decade, but what is a decade to a forest?

Perhaps she will be remembered, as she will remember learning to navigate the roots and the branches, the many groves, the many dangers, and all the other things that shaped her into who she was, who she no longer is.

"I came to say goodbye," Nico says to the treeline. She sighs, hefting her staff, which has sat uneasy in her hands since Alex returned it to her. "I came to say the last of my goodbyes. I can't go back to live with you, so...I'm not the Witch of the Woods anymore."

Nico takes a careful step forward. She kneels in a clear patch of grey soil, and digs a hole with the tip of her staff. She takes the core of the apple Karolina left for her from her pouch and places it in the hole. Then she takes a deep breath, and drives her staff into the hole. She kicks the earth around it, covering the apple core and the base of her staff both.

The staff twitches, but Nico grips it firmly, holding it in place.

"I think it's time we both tried to be something else," Nico explains, resting her forehead against the staff. "I think it's time we let each other go. Don't you?"

The staff twitches again, then becomes immobile.

"Thank you." Nico summons a smile, and then she summons her power, reaching through the jagged sense of loss that has given teeth to her nightmares for the last ten years. "Now _grow_ ," Nico breathes.

Her magic flows out into the wood and into the earth, and the staff of the Witch of the Woods, the staff made of wood gifted by the Old Forest, the staff that held the last fragment of her mother's staff, is undone. In its place, a sapling stands, sending its young roots questing out.

"Goodbye, trees," Nico says, patting the sapling's trunk.

She turns away from the Old Forest, ready for the road at last. She takes one last look at the boundary stone and freezes, her heart hammering in her chest, when she sees that Karolina is there, waiting for her in the light of the newborn sun.

* * *

Karolina looks almost like she's waiting for Nico to join her for breakfast. She isn't glowing anymore, and her hair is in a messy braid, and there are shadows under her eyes, and she wears an old doublet and heavy trews, and she fills every hollow place in Nico's heart when she smiles.

Nico is coward enough to wish that Karolina hadn't found her. She's brave enough, but only just, to stop three paces from Karolina and meet her eye.

"Were you really going to leave without saying goodbye?" Karolina's tone is light, but Nico shrinks beneath the weight of the question.

"...yes." Without her staff, Nico has no idea what to do with her hands. She fidgets, finally settling on grasping the straps of her pack. "I can't stay here."

"I know," Karolina says softly. She takes a step forward. "But that isn't what I was asking."

Nico shakes her head. "I didn't know how...how to leave you. But I have to, so...I thought I'd just go."

Karolina slowly shakes her head. Her eyes are bloodshot and still impossibly blue, and they focus unblinking on Nico's face. "Where?"

"Somewhere else." Nico shrugs. "I don't know. I'll follow the road south. I'll see what's out there."

"Nico..." In Karolina's mouth, her name becomes a caress. "I talked to Alex, and Gert. About the tablets you found. And about...what that cost you."

Nico shakes her head again. "That's all done now."

"You fought so hard, you've given so much, and you still think you don't deserve..." Karolina blows out a sharp breath. "Are you still...angry with me?"

"No!" Nico moves towards her. She finds a use for her hands, taking one of Karolina's in both of hers. "I'm not. I never really was. I...was afraid. I was...I don't understand everything you make me feel, Karolina. There's so much! And I wanted to tell you... _everything_ , but I don't know how to, to tell you all of the things I--"

Nico freezes when Karolina reaches out, brushing a strand of hair behind Nico's ear. Her thumb traces the arc of Nico's cheekbone. "I want to know everything you want to tell me. Don't you want to know everything I want to tell you?"

"Yes," Nico whispers, ashamed at how easily she admits it. It's so easy, even now, to talk to Karolina, as if Nico were a flower opening her petals to the sun. But the winter of their separation is minutes away, and the easier it is to open up now, the harder it is to know that Nico must fade and wither and fall to pieces without Karolina to sustain her. "But...this is your home. This is where your family is, where your friends are. This is where you're needed most. You're their Guardian, and you'll be a good one. And I _can't_ stay! Not here."

"I know." Karolina gently strokes Nico's cheek. "I would never ask you to stay. Not here. Not after what my family did to yours."

Nico heaves out a sigh like a sob. "Then you know this is goodbye! You know you have to let me go."

"I know you have to go," Karolina murmurs, inching closer to Nico. Her voice sinks lower. "But it doesn't need to be goodbye."

"What?" Nico stares at her, paralysed and afraid of the terrible hope that pierces her chest.

"You could ask me to come with you," Karolina says softly. "Don't you know by now that you can ask me anything?"

"I...but you...I can't ask you to leave your home!"

"My home was the road for more years than I lived in the Shining City." Karolina smiles, and the morning grows brighter. "I told you that I missed it. Don't you remember?"

Nico swallows. "But your friends...and your mother."

"My friends know I need some time away from this place. From the things I did, and the things that were done to me. My mother...will be busy helping to fix the city. And I promised her I'd visit. Someday."

"But...your people. You're their Guardian!"

"I never chose to be the Guardian. My connection to the crystal core was an accident. I spoke to Gert and Alex, and they're not sure that my connection can even be severed. But they think that they can recreate the ritual that lets others join themselves to the core. The city doesn't need me to be its Guardian. Maybe there shouldn't be a Guardian at all. Maybe there should be several! I don't know." Karolina slips her hand from between Nico's and clasps Nico's shoulders. "And right now, I don't care. My whole life, I've tried to be a dutiful daughter, a diligent friend. And yesterday, I did my duty for the sake of my friends, my mother, the whole Shining City. So today..."

Nico can only stare up at her in wonder. "Today?"

Karolina tilts her head, her eyes roaming over Nico's face. "Today, because of you, I'm able to consider what I owe to myself." Karolina's gaze settles on Nico's lips. "And what I want to share with you. You are my friend. You are my people. You are so much more than that to me, Nico. So. Ask me to come with you."

Nico bites her lip. "Karolina, I can't--"

"You're Nico Minoru," Karolina says, squeezing her shoulders. "You befriended the Old Forest, you saved my friends, you tore down the Radiant Gate, scattered the Radiant Legion, rescued the Guardian, helped save the Shining City from itself. And...you have my heart. My whole heart. You, Nico, can do anything. Ask me."

"Karolina..." Nico sucks in a breath. "I...I've never been...but I think I...with you, I--" She shakes her head. "Karolina, will you go with--"

Karolina's arms slide down Nico's sides, and she gathers Nico close. Karolina leans down, and she presses her lips to Nico's, and they kiss there beside the boundary stone, beneath the sun, between the Shining City and the Old Forest, becoming lost in a world entirely of their own.

When Karolina finally pulls away, her skin flushed and her breath heavy, her eyes full of light and her lips widening into the brightest smile that Nico has ever seen, she says, "Yes. I'll go with you, Nico. Wherever the road takes us."

It feels as though there is molten metal in Nico's chest, flowing into every crack and cut and hollow in her heart, reforging her into someone new. "Should I...how long do you need to pack?"

"Not long!" Karolina laughs. She steps away from Nico, but only for as long as it takes to reach around the boundary stone and collect a pack more fully provisioned than Nico's. She steps into Nico's arms and kisses her again. "Did you really think I'd let you go without me, Nico? I need you in my life if I'm going to be okay. And I need to know you're always going to be okay, too."

Nico stretches up and catches Karolina's lips in a kiss of her own. "Stay with me, and I will be."

* * *

The road south takes them under the branches of the trees of the Old Forest.

Nico is barely aware of it, when they pass under the shadow of the forest, because Karolina is holding her hand, and that makes everything seem brighter to Nico. It isn't until Karolina stops that Nico notices that anything is wrong.

"Nico," Karolina asks, "what's happening?"

Nico looks up, and gasps. Above them, the branches rustle and stir, power flowing through them. Suddenly, a twig bursts from the tip of a branch, and in one instant a grey bud grows at the end of the twig, and in the next, it flowers. It's stamen is black, but it's petals are of every conceivable colour and shine softly, alleviating the gloom that has always lurked beneath the canopy of the Old Forest.

Soon, another branch blossoms, and then another and another. All along the road, flowers bloom, black and multi-coloured and bathing Nico, Karolina and the road in light.

Nico laughs, even though it feels like a hand is squeezing her heart. "They're saying goodbye. They're saying...they'll remember."

"It's...the flowers are so beautiful!"

"They are." Nico tugs at Karolina's hand, pulling her attention from the trees, pulling Karolina into another kiss. "So are you."

Karolina smiles, light blooming on her skin. "Do you want to stay a little longer?"

"I'll miss you," Nico tells the trees, smiling up at them all with tears in her eyes. Then she turns her smile on Karolina and says, "But I'm ready to go."

A gentle rain of petals falls on them until they reach the point where the road leaves the Old Forest behind. Nico takes one last look back, and then she and Karolina walk away, seeking somewhere new together.

But even when the Witch and the Guardian are gone, and for a long, long time after, the flowers remain, ever in bloom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> This ended up being much harder to write than I thought it would be, but in the end I'm quite proud of what I've written. I would very much like to know your thoughts on the subject, so please do leave me a comment one last time! :)
> 
> ...I'm a little sad to be done with this one. But this one is done.
> 
> Goodbye, Witch! Goodbye, Guardian!


End file.
